Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, March 25th. Title: How to expand consumption this year? The Ministry of Commerce’s press conference focused on
Xinhua News Agency reporter Xie Xiyao
Better play the effectiveness of the old-for-new policy, promote consumption of high-quality foreign trade products, and expand inbound consumption… The reporter learned from a special press conference held by the Ministry of Commerce on the 25th that the Ministry of Commerce will carry out four aspects of work around expanding consumption.
——Upgrade commodity consumption and stabilize the consumption market.
Li Gang, Director of the Consumer Promotion Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said that based on last year’s policy, it will expand the scope of consumer goods exchange for new subsidies, increase subsidies, and optimize service measures to better play the effectiveness of the policy. We will also accelerate the integration of domestic and foreign trade to promote the consumption of high-quality foreign trade products; adapt to the development trend of consumption, cultivate the growth points of consumption of domestic products “trend products”; carry out pilot reforms on automobile circulation consumption, and expand automobile aftermarket consumption.
According to reports, as of March 24, the total number of automobile trade-in applications nationwide this year exceeded 1.5 million, consumers purchased more than 28 million units of 12 major household appliances, more than 45 million consumers applied for subsidies for purchases of more than 56 million mobile phones and other digital products, and more than 2.2 million units of electric bicycle trade-in.
At the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Commerce and eight other departments issued the “Notice on Carrying out Pilot Work for Automobile Distribution Consumption Reform”. Li Gang said that the Ministry of Commerce is currently guiding local commerce authorities to work with relevant departments to carry out pilot application work in an orderly manner and speed up the preparation of pilot work plans. In the future, the list of pilot cities will be determined in batches in accordance with the principle of “maturity of one batch and launching one batch”.
——Expand service consumption and explore consumption growth.
Li Gang said that the action will be implemented to improve the quality of service consumption and benefit the people, and will organize a series of consumption promotion activities such as “Service Consumption Season” and “Chinese Food Festival” around key areas of service consumption such as catering, housekeeping, elderly care, cultural tourism, and sports.
In response to the problem of insufficient supply of high-quality services and the quality of service that concerns the people, Wang Bo, deputy director of the Service Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce, introduced that on the one hand, we will promote the comprehensive pilot demonstration of expanding the opening up of the service industry, promote the orderly opening of the Internet, culture and other fields, and expand the pilot opening of the telecommunications, medical care, education and other fields. On the other hand, starting from relaxing access, reducing restrictions, optimizing supervision, etc., we will expand the supply of diversified services such as health, elderly care, childcare, and housekeeping. Carry out life service recruitment season activities and implement housekeeping service staff skills upgrade actions.
——Cultivate new consumption and enhance consumption momentum.
Li Gang said that he will actively promote the initial launch economy and cultivate a number of influential initial launch platform carriers; develop digital consumption, and release the potential of digital consumption by improving the development environment, deepening digital consumption improvement actions, and cultivating quality e-commerce; cultivate “artificial intelligence + consumption”, promote artificial intelligence consumption terminals to enter thousands of households and artificial intelligence commercial terminals to enter thousands of stores; promote “IP + consumption”, and smooth the entire chain of IP authorization, product development, marketing promotion; develop new consumption such as green and healthy.
Digital consumption is an important part of new consumption. Wang Pengfei, deputy director of the Department of E-commerce of the Ministry of Commerce, said that he will strengthen research on digital consumption-related policies, deepen special improvement actions, focus on digital products and services, content and channels, and guide local governments to launch pragmatic measures.
——Innovate consumption scenarios and stimulate consumption vitality.
Focusing on promoting innovation in consumption scenarios and the release of demand potential, Li Gang focused on introducing two tasks. First, carry out a series of activities of “Shopping in China”, focusing on new growth points in consumption such as green, intelligence, health, culture and tourism, and organizing a series of activities. The second is to improve the effectiveness of the departure tax refund policy, and work with relevant departments to introduce targeted policy measures to increase the number of tax refund stores, optimize tax refund services, facilitate overseas tourists to shop in China, and expand inbound consumption.
Zhang Xiang, a first-level inspector of the Circulation and Development Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said that in cities, urban commercial quality improvement actions will be implemented, with the goal of “hundred streets and thousands of circles”, and an urban commercial pattern led by demonstration pedestrian streets (business districts) and supported by characteristic commercial districts, and a quarter of an hour of convenient living circles. In rural areas, we will continue to improve the county commercial network with county towns as the center, towns as the focus and villages as the basis.
[Editor in charge: Ma Rui]
