But not all products in the store will be more expensive: so which ones will cost more and why?

Our reporter went shopping for answers, in this first of our special series on the GST hike.

Metro departmental store started rolling out the operational changes about a month ago.

This included printing of new price tags and re-tagging products in several batches, which will be put up on the shelves right after the stores closed on June 30th.

All its cash registers are also ready for the switch-over at the stroke of midnight.

Metro said it would be absorbing the 2 percentage point increase in GST for some 15 percent of its merchandise.

Edward Tan, Director, Operations, Metro, said: “If the quantity is too huge, we’ll just (maintain the) status quo, especially on sales items, so we might not want to adjust the numbers.

“We do not want to disrupt our business, and since it’s on sale, just let it go. I mean, the 2 per cent, if you look at the numbers and the manpower to adjust it, the cost may be higher to do the adjustment.”

But on the whole, Metro said the cost incurred to make the switch was marginal.

It was also able to re-deploy its staff efficiently to look into the necessary logistical matters.

This was possible, thanks to a special committee set up in May, to identify likely glitches and to work out an implementation plan.

Some retailers say making the transition this time has been much smoother as they’ve learned from past experiences when the GST was first introduced and subsequently adjusted to 5 per cent some years ago.

Retailer Courts too said it would be absorbing the additional GST on all its products on July 1st, just for a day.

So the change will only kick in on July 2nd, giving customers more time to make their purchase.

Courts said it is now about 90 percent ready for the GST hike.

Gearing up for the switchover had been labour intensive since it retails over 3,000 major products and thousands of small items.

Terry O’Connor, Managing Director, Courts, said: “This is a huge task, everything needs to be done in terms of importing the systems and product code structure, so there is a big IT test to handle as well.

“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t lose any promotional messages or make any promotional mistakes on banners, on posters and so on. The whole suite of collaterals needs to be refreshed.”