Ministry of Commerce: Epidemic will not change the development trend of long-term stability and continuous upgrade of China's consumption
CCTV News : On March 18, the State Council's joint prevention and control mechanism held a press conference on the promotion of consumer replenishment and potential release.
At the meeting, Wang Bin, the person in charge of the Department of Consumer Promotion of the Ministry of Commerce introduced that after the spread of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, residents' outings have sharply decreased, and the consumer market has been greatly affected, especially in February. According to statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics, the total retail sales of consumer goods in the country from January to February fell by 20.5% year-on-year, and the growth rate dropped by 28.7 percentage points from the same period last year. Among the bulk consumer goods, automobile sales fell 37% year-on-year, furniture fell 33.5%, building materials fell 30.5%, home appliances fell 30%, and passenger flow in industries such as accommodation, catering, beauty salons, large department stores, and shopping malls dropped sharply. Face greater difficulties in operation.
At the same time, China's consumption has also shown strong resilience, vitality and new growth points. Consumption of daily necessities has increased steadily after the outbreak. Restaurants' meals have been converted to take-out and dining out has become home cooking. Food sales in January-February increased by 9.7% year-on-year. New types of consumption and upgraded consumption are constantly expanding, and new consumption modes, such as contactless distribution, unmanned retail, and live broadcast retail, are developing rapidly. Artificial intelligence, telecommuting, "Internet + medical + pharmacy" and other contrarian developments, consumption of information consumption, protective supplies, health and other supplies increased significantly.
Recently, with the apparent improvement of the epidemic prevention and control situation, the resumption of business of enterprises has accelerated, and market sales have bottomed out and steadily improved. The nation's large agricultural product wholesale markets, large supermarkets, brand chain stores, e-commerce platforms, and the express delivery industry all opened more than 90%. The country's daily necessities market has ample supply and prices have fallen steadily. The average daily sales of key retail enterprises monitored by the Ministry of Commerce in late February increased by 5.6% compared to mid-February; in early March, they increased by 0.5% from the previous month.
Overall, the short-term impact of the epidemic on consumption is large, and it will be moderate in the medium term. With the national and local policies to promote the release of consumption supplements gradually come to fruition, later consumption will gradually recover. During the epidemic, the country's daily necessities market was adequately supplied. The epidemic has caused China's market and circulation to undergo a severe test. The epidemic will not change the development trend of long-term stability and continuous upgrading of China's consumption.