China to further unleash consumption in 2019: official
By Wang Hailin from People’s Daily
With continuously optimized structure
and better quality of consumption, China is already a major consumption
country, Chinese Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan said on March 9, pledging a
slew of measures to further encourage consumption in 2019.
His remarks also came after a narrowed
growth rate in retail sales of consumer goods drew more global attention. China
registered a total retail sale of 38.1 trillion yuan ($5.67 trillion) in 2018,
with the year-on-year growth dropping 1.2 percentage points from a year ago to
9 percent.
Despite a narrowed growth rate in
China's total retail sales last year, the increment amounted to 3.2 trillion
yuan, equivalent to the annual retail sales in 1998, Zhong told a news
conference on the sidelines of the annual legislative session.
More importantly, the structure of
China's consumption has kept improving, the minister said, illustrating that
consumption of services grew faster than that of goods, with its share rising
to 49.5 percent last year.
The growth of rural consumption was 1.3
percentage points higher than that of urban consumption, he added.
The quality of consumption has been
further improved, with personalized, diversified and customized consumption
burgeoning, he said.
Stressing the greater weight of
consumption to GDP, Zhong said that consumption contributed 76.2 percent to China’s
economic growth last year, remaining the primary driver of economic growth.
He concluded that the growth of the
total retail sales was in line with China's current stage of development, and
also met the requirements posed by a high-quality development.
China is about to further leverage
consumption this year, Zhong vowed, expounding measures in unleashing the
potential of both urban and rural consumption and promoting spending on
services.
In order to upgrade consumption in
urban areas, the country will update a number of pedestrian streets into
platforms based on which the consumption can be better structured for
high-quality growth, he said.
China will also optimize the layout of
convenience stores, and encourage their brand development and franchising, the
minister added, believing that such measures will reassure consumers by
offering them more convenience.
It will also expand rural consumption
by encouraging flow of agricultural products to the cities, and sale of
industrial products in the countryside, said Zhong.
He elaborated that such measures will enable
farmers to gain access to cost-effective industrial products, while
facilitating the connection of urban and rural markets by introducing
e-commerce platforms to countryside.
Online retail sales soared to 1.37 trillion
yuan in rural areas in 2018, up 30.4 percent year on year.
The nation will also further stimulate
service consumption by optimizing supply, said the minister, who described
service consumption as a new economic growth driver with some short boards.
Efforts will be made to tap the full potential
of fronts driving growth of service consumption, according to him, elaborating
that culture, tourism and sports have grown into key drivers, while customized
services and online shopping are emerging ones with great possibility.
Minister of Commerce Zhong
Shan receives an interview after the opening meeting of the second session of
the 13th National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing,
, March 5, 2019. (Photo: People’s Daily Online)
China to further unleash consumption in 2019: official
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