According to The Straits Times, following its success during a three-month run that ended on Sunday, a project to inspire people to spend more time and money in the heartland plans to return for a second edition later this year (Feb 20).
The Heartlands Festival, which began in November of last year, aided shops in seeing a 20% boost in foot traffic. The festival's lucky draw submissions revealed that more than $330,000 was spent in the heartlands.
The festival's lucky draw submissions revealed that more than $330,000 was spent in the heartlands. (Photo / Retrieved from Pixabay)
Low Yen Ling, Minister of State for Trade and Industry and guest of honor at the festival's closing ceremony on Sunday at the Lifelong Learning Institute in Paya Lebar, said that launching the festival two weeks before the Community Development Council (CDC) vouchers were distributed helped to catalyze spending in neighborhood centers.
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The inaugural Heartlands Festival featured shopping and eating contests, as well as open-top buses that took shoppers on tours of the heartland, all in the name of honoring Singapore's 40,000 heartland retailers, hawkers, and wet-market stall operators.
The festival, which is organized by Heartland Enterprise Centre Singapore and funded by the Federation of Merchants' Associations of Singapore and Enterprise Singapore, encourages businesses to accept electronic payments.
Since the start of Heartlands Go Digital in October 2020, Ms Low added, there has been an uptick in digitalization initiatives among heartland retailers.
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"The past two years have been challenging for everyone, including our heartland stores and hawkers," she continued. "These shops also recognize that, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, we need to shift away from manual, paper-based, and in-person sorts of transactions."
Mr Anthony Low, owner of Xin Sheng Ngoh Hiong hawker stall at Boon Lay Place Market and Food Village and chairman of the Boon Lay Hawkers' Association, said he toured around the hawker centre in 2020 to encourage everyone to set up digital payments.
"At the time, there were a lot of Covid-19 cases, so we wanted to make payments contactless so that everyone could be safe," he explained.
