How to stabilize growth under "triple pressure"
Our reporter Xiong Li
The Central Economic Work Conference pointed out that my country’s economic development is facing triple pressures of demand shrinking, supply shocks, and weakening expectations.
How to understand the current triple pressures facing the Chinese economy and how to stabilize the macroeconomic market in 2022 has become a topic of concern.
Demand and supply are expected to be under pressure
"Since this year, my country's economic development and epidemic prevention and control have maintained a leading position in the world, and generally maintained a good situation of high growth, low inflation, and good employment. However, we must also note that since the third quarter, my country's economy has been under downward pressure. The central economic work conference put forward a triple pressure, indicating that the economic downturn has both demand and supply factors, and even more factors that are expected to change in the market.” said Wang Yiming, vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.
From the perspective of demand, the recovery of domestic demand has not been sufficient, the growth of consumption and investment has weakened, the income growth of low-income groups has slowed down, and the recovery of service consumption, especially contact consumption, which has been plagued by the epidemic, has been relatively lagging; although manufacturing investment has grown rapidly, However, it is difficult to hedge against the slowdown in real estate and infrastructure investment growth, and the decline in investment growth has become an important factor in the contraction of domestic demand.
Wang Yiming believes that with the gradual weakening of the higher-than-expected high-speed growth of foreign trade exports in the first three quarters, the growth rate of foreign trade may slow down next year.
From the perspective of supply, the supply chain has suffered external shocks, and the shortage of cores and cabinets has not been alleviated. The pressure to maintain supply and stabilize the chain is still relatively high.
"SMEs are squeezed by costs and the market, production and operation difficulties have increased, market expectations are unstable, and individual large-scale real estate companies have defaulted on debts, and the pressure on risk prevention and control in the economic and financial sectors has increased." Wang Yiming said.
The pressure on economic operations has been reflected in statistical data.
For example, the total retail sales of consumer goods and the year-on-year growth rate of investment fell from the double digits at the beginning of the year to single digits, and the two-year average growth rate has also declined as a whole. International commodity prices have risen, and the ex-factory prices of industrial producers have increased from The 0.3% in January expanded to 13.5% in October. Although the increase in November has fallen back, it is still at a relatively high level.
Bian Quanshui, chief economist of Caixin think tank Monita, believes that the triple pressure is not only a problem of China's economy itself, but has actually become a worldwide problem under the influence of the epidemic.
At present, my country's economy is in a transitional period, and the performance of the triple pressure is more obvious.
Persist in the word steady and seek progress in stability
How to look at the dialectical relationship of "stability and advancement"?
"Stability is the first word, and stability is the first priority. In the relationship between stability and advancement, stability is the prerequisite, the foundation, and the main aspect of the contradiction. Stability is to stabilize the economic growth rate and prevent it from continuing to decline. Promoting reasonable economic growth is also an important prerequisite for achieving steady improvement in quality." Wang Yiming said that to do a good job next year’s economic work, all regions and departments must shoulder the responsibility of stabilizing the macro economy, and all parties must actively promote Policies for economic stability should be cautiously promulgated with policies that have a shrinking effect, and policy efforts should be appropriately advanced, and strive to achieve economic stability and development, and create a good macro environment for the promotion of high-quality development.
"The Central Economic Work Conference emphasized the need to promote the economy to achieve steady improvement in quality and reasonable growth in quantity. This is actually the direction we are heading. Only by'advancing' can we continuously improve people's livelihood, resolve accumulated conflicts, and enhance national competitiveness, and Prevent the emergence of new major risks. Stability is for progress; only stability can enter. For a large country like ours, stability sometimes means progress, and stability can also enter." Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of China Center for International Economic Exchanges David Zhang said.
Experts believe that only by stabilizing the macroeconomic market, doing a good job in overall planning and coordination, and hitting a combination of policies can we effectively cope with the triple pressure.
The Central Economic Work Conference pointed out that it is necessary to continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy.
A proactive fiscal policy must improve efficiency and pay more attention to precision and sustainability.
Wang Yiming believes that to improve efficiency is to enhance the positive effect of fiscal policy on stabilizing the macro economy.
In the context of shrinking demand, the intensity of fiscal expenditure should be further increased and the expenditure progress should be accelerated.
Especially when the fiscal revenue growth situation is good this year, it is not appropriate to rush to reduce the fiscal deficit rate.
Accuracy means to optimize the structure of fiscal expenditures. A new tax and fee reduction policy should be implemented next year. Some policies due at the end of this year may be postponed as appropriate to strengthen support for small, medium and micro enterprises, individual businesses, and manufacturing. .
It is also necessary to increase transfer payments to local governments, continue to promote the sinking of financial resources, and better support grassroots governments in implementing policies to help enterprises to relieve their plight.
Wang Yiming said that a prudent monetary policy must be flexible and appropriate to maintain reasonable and sufficient liquidity.
In the next step, the leading role of re-lending, rediscounting, and direct access to the real economy policy tools should be further used to guide financial institutions to increase support for the real economy, especially small and micro enterprises, technological innovation, and green development.
Under the circumstance of weakening market expectations, the loan demand of enterprises has declined, which requires the coordination of fiscal and monetary policies to coordinate and cooperate with each other.
Stimulate domestic demand potential market vitality
The Central Economic Work Conference proposed to implement the strategy of expanding domestic demand and strengthen the endogenous driving force for development.
"The potential for domestic demand lies in our advantage." Han Wenxiu, deputy director of the Office of the Central Committee of Finance and Economics in charge of daily work, said that we must implement the strategy of expanding domestic demand, promote the continuous recovery of consumption, actively expand effective investment, and focus on stabilizing growth, adjusting structure, and The joint part of benefiting people's livelihood is working hard.
Properly advance infrastructure construction and increase investment in areas such as pollution reduction and carbon reduction, new energy, new technology, new industrial clusters, etc., to expand short-term demand and increase long-term momentum.
"China is the largest developing country, and there is still a relatively large investment space. The government appropriately increases the scale of infrastructure investment, which can effectively promote social investment and corporate investment, and form a benign interaction between infrastructure investment and other investments, investment and consumption. In the case of a slowdown in the expansion of external demand next year, it can effectively enhance the role of domestic demand in stimulating economic growth, thereby stabilizing the macroeconomic market." Wang Yiming said.
Ning Jizhe, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission and director of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that in 2022, the potential of domestic demand must be fully tapped to promote high-quality economic development.
On the one hand, focus on expanding consumer demand, consolidate and expand basic consumption and upgraded consumption, combine commodity consumption and service consumption, and implement relevant measures to boost large-scale consumption such as automobiles and home appliances; expand information consumption, green consumption and other new types Consumption, promote the integrated development of online and offline, and accelerate the integration of the county’s rural e-commerce system and express logistics distribution system.
On the other hand, actively expand effective investment.
Make good use of and use the investment in the central budget and local government special bonds in advance, accelerate the implementation of the 102 major engineering projects identified in the "14th Five-Year Plan" outline, and focus on effective investment in the "two new and one heavy" areas and to make up for shortcomings.
Actively mobilize the vitality of social capital and encourage the stable development of private investment.
In terms of stimulating the vitality of market players, Wang Yiming believes that it is essential to effectively improve the expectations of market players.
The support policies for small and micro enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households should be postponed as much as possible if they can be postponed, and those that can be expanded should be expanded as much as possible.
For example, policies such as the tax rebate for value-added tax and the deduction of R&D expenses for technology-based SMEs can be further strengthened.
In fact, with a view to coordinating and coordinating policies for the next two years, relevant policies are making efforts in advance.
For example, the Ministry of Finance has recently issued a special debt limit of 1.46 trillion yuan in advance to localities in 2022.
The executive meeting of the State Council held on December 15 deployed further market-oriented measures to strengthen financial support for small, medium and micro enterprises, and determined policies and measures to increase support for manufacturing.
Wen Bin, chief researcher of China Minsheng Bank, said that the executive meeting of the State Council further deployed financial policies to support small, medium and micro enterprises, which is an important part of the policy of stabilizing growth next year.
At the same time, relevant policy arrangements have improved the long-term mechanism of financial services for small, medium and micro enterprises, which will help to improve the service capabilities of financial institutions, so that they can lend themselves, willingly, able, and meeting loans.
Our reporter Xiong Li