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FOR five mornings last week, vegetable seller Lai Tan Hock, 38, had to dump 10 kg of fresh leafy greens into the rubbish truck outside Tekka Market.
In all, he threw away $300 worth of vegetables from China. He was among many wet market stallholders who had had to get rid of the unsold Chinese vegetables last week.
A Straits Times check showed that at least 12 vegetable sellers at two wet markets have had to dump the greens from China because prices for these hit the roof after the bitter cold snap that shoppers refused to pay for them.
In some cases, vegetables like cai xin more than doubled in price. Mr Lai was charging $5.50 per kg of cai xin, up from the usual $2.50.
Said Mr Lai, who gets about 30 per cent of his supplies from China: 'Prices of vegetables from China went up so high that customers didn't want to buy them.. Vegetables rot fast, so we had to throw them away.'
Other vegetables affected by the supply crunch included kai lan, which doubled in price from $3 per kg to $6, and cauliflower, up 50 per cent from $20 a kg to about $30.
Now, vegetable sellers, afraid of being burnt again by the high prices of China produce, are turning away from the country.
Instead, they are importing more from Malaysia, which charges 30 per cent lower.
Singapore imported about 28 per cent - 104,713 tonnes - of its fresh vegetables from China last year.
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