[Bilingual Financial News] Expanding Domestic Demand Will Become The Focus Of Economic Work In 2024

The key engine of economic growth is consumption. How to effectively stimulate people's purchasing power has become a core issue in current economic work. Increasing residents' income and cultivating new consumption hot spots are the realistic ways to solve the problem of insufficient effective demand.

The strategic significance of expanding domestic demand

The basic plan for coping with the complex external environment and stabilizing economic growth is to expand domestic demand. The current global economic recovery is sluggish, and the uncertainty of external market demand has increased. The traditional model of relying on investment and export to drive the economy is facing challenges. Against this background, fully tapping the potential of the domestic market and forming an internal virtuous cycle plays a decisive role in ensuring the smooth operation of the economy.

Committed to promoting the expansion of domestic demand and raising it to a strategic level, this shows that the core point of the policy is slightly tilted from the supply side to the demand side. This is not only a necessary requirement to stabilize economic growth in the short term, but also a long-term requirement for building a new development pattern. By stimulating the potential energy contained in domestic consumption, it can increase the resilience and internal motivation of the economy and reduce the sensitivity to external fluctuations.

Increase income of urban and rural residents

The key to improving consumption power is to increase residents' disposable income. In recent years, the per capita disposable income of urban residents has continued to grow, but there is still room for improvement in the growth rate of rural residents' income. In the future, it will be necessary to promote income growth through a variety of different channels, especially to ensure that the employment of key groups remains stable and to implement various policies that benefit farmers.

The income distribution structure also needs to be optimized, and efforts must be made to expand the size of the middle-income group. This must be achieved by reforming and improving secondary distribution mechanisms such as taxation and social security. Of course, at the same time, hard work and innovation must be encouraged to achieve wealth, and the proportion of labor remuneration in primary distribution must be increased. Only when people's wallets are bulging can the confidence to consume be sufficient.

Stimulate commodity consumption

Commodities such as automobiles and home appliances with large consumption amounts and long industrial chains have a significant role in driving the economy. In 2023, relevant departments launched policies to promote automobile consumption, which covered the extension of vehicle purchase tax exemptions and exemptions for new energy vehicles, etc., which directly boosted market sales.

Another key area is home consumption, which includes home appliances, furniture, home decoration, etc. Many families have potential needs for upgrading home appliances and improving their home environment. In the future, they can consider using trade-in subsidies and promotion of green smart products to further release this part of the consumption potential.

Cultivate new consumption growth points

Technological development has led to the rapid evolution of consumption patterns. New consumption areas such as digital consumption, green consumption, and health consumption are growing rapidly. Online entertainment, smart medical care, smart homes, etc. are becoming new consumption growth points.

The proportion of service consumption continues to rise, with cultural tourism, sports, housekeeping and other services showing signs of strong demand. Entering 2023, domestic tourist arrivals and income have shown a very significant growth trend year-on-year, which fully demonstrates the strong resilience of service consumption. Strong support should be given to these industries to enable them to improve quality and expand capacity, thereby creating a better consumer experience.

Optimize consumption environment and confidence

A good consumption environment is a prerequisite for consumers to dare and be willing to consume. This includes strengthening the protection of consumer rights and interests, implementing measures to crack down on counterfeit and shoddy goods, and completing and improving the standard system including goods and services. At the same time, consumption infrastructure needs to be improved, such as building convenient living circles in urban communities and improving commercial circulation networks in rural areas.

This is also critical in terms of stabilizing consumer expectations. By maintaining overall price stability and providing more high-quality products and services, consumers can reduce their worries and concerns. Creating a consumption environment with safety features, convenience and comfort is itself an important way to promote consumption.

Policy coordination and future prospects

Supporting consumption is a self-contained project that requires multiple policies in the fiscal, financial, and industrial sectors to work together. For example, fiscal measures should increase direct support to promote consumer activities, and monetary control policies can ensure reasonably sufficient liquidity to reduce the costs of consumer credit. In terms of industrial planning policies, we must focus on improving the quality of supply so that supply can more appropriately adapt to changes in demand.

As the employment situation gradually improves and residents' incomes steadily increase, the consumption environment remains optimized. Therefore, the domestic consumer market is expected to continue its recovery trend. The most important point is to implement various policies in a meticulous manner and to truly deal with the obstacles and irritants in people's consumption process, so as to make the power device of consumption more powerful.

What do you think is the most urgent practical obstacle that needs to be solved right now, so as to further stimulate consumption potential? Welcome to share your thoughts in the comment area, and please give this article a like.