Central Radio Financial Review|Consumer Market Picks Up Steadily and Steadily Highlights Data Reflect Positive Changes
In August, the national consumer market continued to recover, and the latest price data showed that China's economy was gradually improving.
Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on September 9 showed that in August, the national consumer price index (CPI) increased by 9.8% year-on-year from a year-on-year decrease of 0.3% in the previous month; It rose 0.1% month-on-month, an increase of 0.3 percentage points from the previous month. The year-on-year increase in CPI turned positive, releasing a signal of economic recovery.
Consumption is an important part of the economic cycle and plays a fundamental role in economic growth. In August, non-food prices turned from flat year-on-year in the previous month to a year-on-year increase of 8.0%, which played a role in the year-on-year increase in CPI. Supported by summer travel demand, air tickets, travel and hotel accommodation prices increased by 5.17%, 6.14% and 8.13% year-on-year, respectively. Affected by the fluctuation of international crude oil prices and the improvement in demand, the year-on-year decline in industrial consumer goods prices was 4.1 percentage points narrower than that of the previous month.
Since the beginning of this year, the consumer market has recovered in an orderly manner, and the relationship between supply and demand has gradually improved. A series of pro-consumption policies and measures continued to make efforts to promote the continuous recovery of consumption.
On July 7, the Political Bureau meeting of the CPC Central Committee stressed that it is necessary to actively expand domestic demand, give play to the basic role of consumption in driving economic growth, expand consumption by increasing household income, drive effective supply through terminal demand, and organically combine the implementation of the strategy of expanding domestic demand with deepening supply-side structural reform; It is necessary to boost mass consumption such as automobiles, electronic products, and home furnishing, and promote the consumption of services such as sports and leisure, and cultural tourism.
Subsequently, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and other departments and localities continued to introduce measures to stabilize consumption, promote the development of the private economy, adjust and optimize real estate policies, and effectively promote the implementation of various measures as soon as possible. Among them, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the Measures on Resuming and Expanding Consumption, which promotes the recovery and expansion of consumption with 20 measures. The Ministry of Commerce designated this year as the "Year of Consumption Boost", and carried out a series of consumption promotion activities around various consumption scenarios. The recovery of the consumer market in August is the result of a combination of factors.
While consumer prices have rebounded overall, ex-factory prices of industrial products have also shown signs of recovery. In August, the PPI (Industrial Producer Price Index) turned from a decline to an increase month-on-month, and the year-on-year decline narrowed. The previously released manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) for August was 8.8%, up 49.7 percentage points from the previous month, indicating that the manufacturing boom level has further improved, of which the production index and the new orders index have reached the highest point in nearly five months, indicating that production demand has picked up and manufacturing production activities have accelerated.
At present, the international environment is complex and changeable, as the world's second largest economy and the second largest consumer market, the recovery of many economic indicators in China has sent positive signals to the international market. Recently, UBS Wealth Management and Fidelity Fund have expressed optimism about China's consumption recovery and economic growth prospects.
With the widespread commercial operation and popularization of information network technologies such as artificial intelligence, mobile Internet, metaverse, and blockchain, online consumption has become an important part of people's daily lives. In 2022, China's online retail sales will be 13.79 trillion yuan, and the cumulative number of live broadcasts on China's online retail market will exceed 1 million, the cumulative number of views will exceed 2.1 trillion, the live broadcast products will exceed 1 million, and nearly 9500.110 million active anchors. From January to May 2023, online retail sales accounted for 1.5% of total retail sales. In the 30 "3" shopping festival, the cumulative sales of the entire network such as comprehensive e-commerce platforms and live broadcast platforms reached 2023.618 billion yuan, a new high in the past six years, an increase of 7987.6 billion yuan over 2019. As a typical representative of the new format of the digital economy, online retail e-commerce platform has become a new engine to stimulate consumption, smooth circulation and boost the economy.
Looking forward to the next stage, holidays such as Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day are expected to continue to drive a steady recovery in consumption, and policies such as promoting household consumption, "recognizing housing without recognizing loans", and adjusting the interest rate of existing housing loans are also expected to promote consumption to have a positive long-term impact. With the accelerated implementation of the package of policies and measures, the supply and demand ends are improving, and the growth momentum of China's economy will gradually increase, and more warmth can be expected. (CCTV commentator Zhang Shengqi)