THE E-MAIL FORUM
Q Is there enough competition among supermarkets?
Hong Kong's international reputation as a model laissez-faire society has long been considered a joke by people who live here.
About half our population lives in public housing, our health services are almost free, and the government has always controlled the release, and the price, of land. So it is hardly surprising to read the latest Consumer Council report on the ParknShop and Wellcome supermarket chains, confirming what we've all known for years, that we suffer from a vast and tightly manipulated supermarket duopoly. Such stunningly obvious exclusivity would not be tolerated in any other place calling itself a 'world class' city.
In Discovery Bay, a community of about 14,000 people, ParknShop has a monopoly - a squalid, smelly and crowded shopping experience incorporating a wet market, with meat and dead and live fish mixing with fruit, vegetables and everything else.
Worse, the only upmarket deli in Discovery Bay is run by ... that's right, ParknShop. Clearly, Discovery Bay ParknShop can charge whatever it wants for whatever quality foodstuffs it sees fit to sell.