What the dismal state of our wet markets tells about government monopolies

In yet another piece of irony the world’s allegedly most free enterprise city is a place where the Hong Kong government is one of the biggest retail landlords. The way it conducts this business provides a dismal illustration of just why this is a terrible idea.

Top of the list of Hong Kong’s grimmest retail spaces are the wet markets operated by the Food Environment and Hygiene Department. They tend to be clad in lavatory-style tiling, lit by the harshest of strip lighting and rigorously designed to exclude the smallest possibility of attractiveness. Moreover most of these markets can be smelled well before you get anywhere near their unappetizing entrances.

In other places around the world food markets are an absolute delight, in fact I make a point of visiting them when I travel overseas, but no visitor to Hong Kong in their right mind would dream of entering one of these dank places.

They are covered in tiling of the cheapest and ugliest kind because the bureaucrats who run these places see it as their job to maintain hygiene and believe that the way to do this is to forsake all other considerations.

The markets I know best have lower floors serving meat, fish and seafood while the upper floors or back sections focus on fruit, vegetables and other miscellaneous items. Generally speaking the secondary areas are less than fully occupied and tend to look like rubbish-dumps.

The government used to own even more retail centres before they hived off most, but not all of the Housing Authority’s retail premises to the Link, a shiny new commercial operation that has succeeded in squeezing out a large number of modest locally-owned retailers and replacing them with the big chain stores that dominate the market.