Securities Times reporter Jiang Dan
The total retail sales of consumer goods in March decreased month-on-month, reflecting the drag of the new crown pneumonia epidemic on final consumption.
A few days ago, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Further Unleashing Consumption Potential and Promoting Sustainable Recovery of Consumption".
What are the characteristics of this document?
What policy signals have been released?
What role will it play in promoting consumption?
Around these issues, a reporter from Securities Times interviewed Zhao Ping, vice president of the Research Institute of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.
Consumption recovers resiliently
Securities Times reporter: Since the outbreak of the epidemic, consumption has been the most affected and the recovery has been slow.
What do you think are the main reasons?
Zhao Ping: Generally speaking, my country's consumption is huge and its growth is resilient. Since the epidemic, consumption has continued to recover.
However, just as the correct judgment made by the Central Economic Work Conference at the end of last year, my country's economic development is currently facing the triple pressure of demand contraction, supply shock, and weakening expectations. The first quarter of this year, especially since March, was affected by multiple factors. The zero scale has declined, and the pressure to stabilize consumption has increased.
First, the epidemic has led to a contraction in service consumption.
The epidemic has repeatedly affected the consumption of services with agglomeration and contact characteristics such as tourism, catering, accommodation, and entertainment. In March, the business activity indices of railway transportation, air transportation, accommodation, catering and other industries all dropped by more than 20 percentage points.
Second, due to the repeated impact of the epidemic, the probability of home consumption has increased, social consumption scenarios have been reduced or simplified, and commodity consumption has also been affected to a certain extent.
Securities Times reporter: Considering these two reasons, what do you think are the highlights of the Opinions on Further Unleashing Consumption Potential and Promoting Continued Recovery of Consumption issued by the State Council?
Zhao Ping: The biggest feature of this document is the combination of goal orientation and problem orientation, taking into account both short-term support and medium and long-term promotion.
In the short term, the document emphasizes responding to the impact of the epidemic and promoting the orderly recovery and development of consumption.
Ensure the stability of the supply chain and sufficient supply of basic daily necessities, so that the basic life of ordinary people can be effectively guaranteed.
The document emphasizes the scientific planning and construction of a number of suburban warehouse bases integrating warehousing, sorting, processing, packaging and other functions in major and medium-sized cities, so as to ensure the timely dispatch of living materials to nearby areas in case of emergency, and effectively ensure the smooth flow of consumer goods.
This responds to societal concerns.
In the medium and long term, the document starts from the perspective of stabilizing consumption fundamentals, promoting consumption upgrading and service consumption growth, strengthening cross-border integration of consumption in business, culture, tourism, sports, health, and transportation, and actively expanding immersive, experiential, and interactive consumption. new scenarios of consumption, stimulate consumption potential, and cultivate new consumption growth points.
Consumption must be upgraded
Securities Times reporter: The "Opinions" proposes to stabilize the consumption fundamentals from five aspects.
Why are they regarded as an important part of a stable consumption base plate?
Zhao Ping: The "Opinions" proposed to innovate and improve quality in an all-round way, and focus on stabilizing the consumption base.
Including: actively promoting the quality and upgrading of physical consumption, strengthening the promotion of service consumption such as healthy elderly care and childcare, continuing to expand cultural and tourism consumption, and vigorously developing green consumption and fully tapping the consumption potential of counties and townships.
It can be seen that the policy arrangement to stabilize the basic consumption base pays attention to commodity categories that account for a high proportion of consumption, such as agricultural products, automobiles, home appliances, furniture, building materials, etc.
In addition, the document emphasizes the need for comprehensive innovation and quality improvement, using a new generation of information technology to reshape the innovative model of the supply chain, and constantly creating more new products to meet personalized and diversified consumer needs; to adapt to the general trend of green consumption. , and encourage enterprises to develop more green products that meet consumer demand.
These measures will promote the formation of new consumption growth points and provide lasting support for the long-term steady growth of consumption.
To stabilize the consumption fundamentals, we should also focus on rural areas where the growth rate is relatively fast and the consumption level is still low.
According to our calculations, the average propensity to consume in rural areas in the first quarter of this year was 75.9%.
That is, with an income of 100 yuan, people in rural areas are willing to spend 75.9 yuan for consumption, which is more than 10 percentage points higher than that in cities.
The document reiterates the work requirements of promoting brand consumption and quality consumption into rural areas, which is conducive to better meeting the current needs of rural areas and releasing consumption growth potential.
Securities Times reporter: The document proposes a number of measures to vigorously develop green consumption. It also mentions that the government will increase the procurement of green and low-carbon products.
What is the status of green consumption?
What are the other constraints to vigorously develop green consumption?
Zhao Ping: At present, there is no full-scale statistical data on green consumption.
There are many types of certification related to existing green products, which belong to different departments and organizations. The certification standards are not completely unified, and the certification process is not completely consistent.
Unified green certification is very important for consumers to buy products.
However, it still takes a process to improve the energy-saving and green manufacturing standard system and the green product certification and labeling system. It is suggested that at this stage, we can start with improving the transparency of standards and certification, and enhance consumers' recognition of the authority of certification.
Stabilize employment and increase income
Securities Times reporter: The document emphasizes the steady increase in the wage income of workers. What ways can this be achieved?
Zhao Ping: From a theoretical point of view, income is the most important factor in determining consumption.
In the first quarter, among the per capita disposable income of residents, the wage income of laborers accounted for 56.8% of the per capita disposable income.
At this stage, wage income growth is still a crucial factor in stabilizing the consumption of ordinary people, and it is an important basis and prerequisite for promoting consumption.
Steadily increase the wage income of laborers, especially the income level of urban wage-earners and migrant workers. On the one hand, it can optimize the composition of wages, increase the reform of the salary system, and form a relatively stable income expectation. On the other hand, it is necessary to protect the basic rights and interests, and work hard to ensure that wages are paid in full and in a timely manner.
Securities Times reporter: Do you have any other suggestions for reversing residents' consumption expectations?
Zhao Ping: To reverse residents' consumption expectations, it is necessary to use employment to drive income growth.
First of all, we must start from three aspects to stabilize employment. One is to promote employment through entrepreneurship, support the construction of various labor markets, talent markets, and gig labor markets, support the development of self-employment, increase part-time employment opportunities, standardize the development of new employment forms, and improve Flexible employment labor and social security policies.
The second is to pay attention to the employment of key groups and solve the employment problems of young people such as college graduates.
Third, we must improve the quality of employment, strengthen employment assistance for those in difficulty, improve the vocational education system, and carry out vocational skills training.
Secondly, on the basis of raising the level of employment, it is necessary to improve the wage determination, reasonable growth and payment guarantee mechanisms, continue to promote the development of rural industries that enrich the people, increase the income expectations of urban and rural residents, and drive consumption expectations to strengthen.
In addition, it can be seen from the document that the government will reasonably increase public consumption expenditure, expand the supply of non-essential non-essential public services through diversification, and reduce the expenditure of residents by improving the expenditure efficiency of public services such as education, medical care, elderly care, and childcare. It has the effect of helping residents increase their income and boosting their consumer confidence.