Staff members work at a construction site in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, March 26, 2020. (Photo/Xinhua)
Expanding investment, consumption crucial while avoiding return of virus
A key Party meeting on Friday pledged greater efforts to expand domestic demand, increase investment and help small and medium-sized enterprises survive the COVID-19 pandemic with normalized containment measures in place.
The Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee underlined the importance of preventing a possible domestic rebound of the outbreak and stabilizing economic fundamentals while ensuring the people's basic living needs are met.
The meeting presided over by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, called for efforts to help businesses get back to work and production at full capacity, restore the normal economic and social order and foster new growth points while continuing epidemic containment measures on a regular basis.
It is important to unleash the potential of consumption, enable businesses to resume operations, boost consumer buying and appropriately raise public spending, said a statement released after the meeting.
To bolster investment, the country will carry out renovations of old residential communities, ramp up investment in traditional and new types of infrastructure, spur the upgrading of traditional sectors and boost investment into emerging strategic sectors, the statement said. More work must be done to spur private investment and encourage exporters to explore the domestic market.
The meeting called for quicker steps to carry out measures such as tax cuts, fee reductions and lowering of financing costs and rents to boost SMEs, which account for about 80 percent of urban employment. The country must maintain the stability and competitiveness of its industry and supply chains with efforts to coordinate the resumption of business operations at full capacity within industry chains, the statement said.
Meeting participants noted that the first quarter has been highly unusual, given the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 causing unprecedented disruptions to social and economic development.
However, the Chinese economy has shown great resilience, with business operations now approaching or reaching normal levels and the pandemic spawning new sectors and business models and pushing the growth of other sectors, the statement said.
The meeting also highlighted the unprecedented challenges in economic growth, saying that difficulties, risks and uncertainties must be fully reckoned with.
It reiterated the importance of staying committed to the general principle of pursing progress while ensuring stability, sticking to the new development philosophy, focusing on supply-side structural reform as the main task and seeking high-quality growth powered by reform and opening-up.
Authorities must scale up efforts to stabilize the job market, ensure the public's well-being, protect market entities, guarantee the security of food and energy, stabilize industry and supply chains and ensure normal operations at the primary level, the statement said. The goals of poverty alleviation and building a moderately prosperous society in all respects must be met, it added.
The meeting stressed the necessity of making proactive fiscal policy more effective, with steps to raise the budget deficit ratio, issue special sovereign bonds and increase the scale of local government bonds. Prudent monetary policy must be more flexible and accommodating to maintain adequate liquidity with the use of tools such as relending and cuts in reserve requirement ratios and interest rates.
To consolidate sustained momentum in epidemic containment, the meeting urged more tightened, concrete and detailed measures to carry out containment measures on a regular basis.
Hubei province and its capital, Wuhan, must ensure that key groups of people receive nucleic acid tests across the board and other groups can obtain tests of their own volition. The test results and isolation measures must be mutually recognized between the province and other provincial areas, the statement said.
Containment efforts in Beijing must be further enhanced, and local authorities must adopt targeted measures to prevent the virus from bouncing back, it added.
China will enhance the care and support of its citizens overseas while guarding against cases imported through border cities, it said, adding that the country will continue to do its best to offer help to relevant countries and contribute to international cooperation in epidemic containment in various forms.
