(Economic Observation) June's decline further narrows China's consumption recovery

  China News Agency, Beijing, July 16 (Reporter Chen Su) In June of this year, China's total retail sales of consumer goods fell by 1.8% year-on-year. Although it has not yet been "turned right", the decline has continued to narrow. Chinese consumption is on the recovery path.

  Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China on the 16th shows that in June, China's total retail sales of social consumer goods was 33526 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), a year-on-year decrease of 1.8% (actually a 2.9% decrease after deducting price factors), a decrease of 1.0 from the previous month. China’s consumption has narrowed for four consecutive months.

  Zhao Ping, director of the International Trade Research Department of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said in an interview with a reporter from China News Service that China's epidemic prevention and control measures are appropriate, and resumption of production and production is fully promoted, which effectively guarantees the rapid recovery of consumption supply capacity. Through the implementation of the "Six Stability" policy and the implementation of the "Six Guarantees" goal, residents' income remained basically stable, consolidating their spending power. In addition, the rapid development of online formats has strengthened the security of consumer channels and is conducive to the continuous release of consumer potential.

  Since the epidemic, online consumption has become an important force driving consumption in China. From January to June, online retail sales were 5,151.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.3% and an increase of 2.8 percentage points from January to May. Among them, the online retail sales of physical commodities was 4,348.1 billion yuan, an increase of 14.3%, accounting for 25.2% of the total retail sales of social consumer goods.

  Although the decline in consumption continued to narrow, compared with May, the narrowing in June has decreased. In addition, consumption, which is the first “troika” to drive the Chinese economy, has contributed less to economic recovery than investment and foreign trade.

  "In the second half of the year, we need to work harder to develop consumer power." Liu Aihua, spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics of China and director of the Department of Comprehensive Statistics of the National Economy, said on the 16th that he interpreted consumption data for the first half of the year. The decline range is 11.4% lower than the same period of the previous year, indicating that the current consumption recovery is still facing constraints, especially under the conditions of normalized epidemic prevention and control, some clustering and contacting consumer activities are still subject to certain restrictions, so consumer goods retail is still recovering Among the growth trend.

  Chen Yanbin, executive director of the Key Research Base for National Economics Textbook Construction at Renmin University of China, said that residents’ willingness to save in the early stage of the epidemic has increased, which has inhibited consumption. In the first quarter of 2020, household deposits increased by 6.5 trillion yuan, an increase of 47,000 over the same period last year. 100 million yuan.

  From the perspective of different consumer goods categories, Chinese residents’ consumption of necessities such as food and consumption grew rapidly in June, with growth rates around 10%; bulk goods categories remained weak, with furniture falling by 1.4% year-on-year and automobiles by 8.2%; gathering The obvious decline in the catering category is still very large, down 15.2% year-on-year.

  Zhao Ping said that the current service consumption accounts for more than 40% of China's consumption. Due to the need for epidemic prevention and control, the social and clustered service industry resumed production late, which affected the supply of service consumption and dragged down consumption. The pace of recovery.

  Looking ahead, what is the trend of Chinese consumption? When can I turn negative to positive?

  Cheng Shi, chief economist of ICBC International, said that the central bank's urban depositors questionnaire survey showed that residents' willingness to save in the second quarter stopped rising, and consumer willingness bottomed out. Offline consumption, service consumption and durable goods consumption that had been dragged down by the epidemic had previously been dragged down, or Repairs will be accelerated in the third quarter. With the continuous improvement of the domestic epidemic prevention system, more offline consumption scenarios and cross-regional consumption paths may gradually be lifted. It is expected that the year-on-year growth rate of total retail sales of social consumption will continue to rebound in the second half of the year and will most likely turn positive in the third quarter.

  Zhao Ping also said that China's consumption will continue to pick up in the future, but there is still a big challenge to return to the 8% growth rate before the epidemic. The International Monetary Fund predicts that due to the global spread of the epidemic, the global economy will shrink this year by 4.9 % Will pose a huge challenge to the steady growth of China's economy.

  As the Chinese official said, boosting consumption in the second half of the year will be "more aggressive."

  Zhao Ping said that the next step should continue to do a good job of normalizing the prevention and control of the epidemic situation, so as to maintain the normalization of the economic order, ensure the supply capacity of consumption, and provide more support for the continuous release of consumer demand; do everything possible to achieve stable employment and stabilize the wages of residents Income, provide strong material support for consumption growth; continuously deepen reforms, introduce more consumer support policies, reduce the burden of companies affected by the epidemic, and rapidly improve the supply capacity of the service industry; encourage enterprises to develop innovatively and enable online consumption The trend of rapid growth has been maintained, further driving consumption back to stability. (Finish)