FairPrice sets new limits on canned food, frozen poultry, cooking oil to discourage overbuying, reselling

SINGAPORE — NTUC FairPrice has enhanced its grocery purchase limits to include canned food, frozen poultry and cooking oil, the supermarket chain said in a media advisory on Friday (March 27).

The new limits are effective from 7am on Friday at FairPrice outlets islandwide.

FairPrice’s grocery purchase limits were established on March 17 after Malaysia announced its nationwide lockdown, to ensure that customers have access to daily essentials, to discourage overbuying and to deter resellers during the Covid-19 outbreak.

FairPrice said daily essentials remain available as it has sufficient stockpiles of food and its supply lines remain largely intact.

The existing purchase limits for items including instant noodles, vegetables, rice, eggs and fresh poultry remain unchanged, while the limit on paper products has been lowered.

"Over the past few days, we saw an increase in customer traffic as well as purchasing volume but within reasonable levels," said FairPrice group chief executive officer Seah Kian Peng.

Under the new limits, each customer is allowed to buy a maximum of:

• Two packs of paper products (toilet paper, facial tissue, kitchen towels)

• Two packs of instant noodles or pasta

• 10kg of rice

• S$30 worth of vegetables

• S$30 worth of fresh, frozen and processed poultry

• Three packs of 10 or one tray of 30 eggs

• Six cans of canned products (fish, meat or vegetables)

• 5L of cooking oil

FairPrice said the new purchase limits are slightly higher than what a typical shopper buys and are sufficient to meet the daily grocery needs of an average family in Singapore.

"We continue to encourage and thank customers for buying responsibly to ensure that everyone, especially those who are more vulnerable, continues to have access to groceries," Mr Seah added.