On August 18, the Ministry of Commerce, together with the Ministry of Finance, the People’s Bank of China and other seven departments, officially issued the Guidelines on Further Stimulating Sinking Market Vitality and Activating County-Level Consumption. The document releases a package of targeted measures to unlock the consumption potential of county and township markets and shore up weak links in sinking consumption sectors, serving as a key new policy to stabilize and expand domestic demand.
Focusing on core pain points including insufficient county-level consumption scenarios, financing difficulties for small and medium-sized commercial enterprises, and backward market services, the policy focuses on three major directions: financial empowerment, industrial upgrading and scenario improvement. It clearly proposes optimizing the financial service system for sinking markets, supporting qualified wholesale, retail, catering, cultural tourism and life service enterprises to expand financing channels through listing, bond issuance and equity financing, and effectively reducing the financing costs of small and medium-sized consumer enterprises.
In addition, the policy guides banking institutions to launch low-interest credit products tailored for county-level business entities, increasing capital support for township supermarkets, community retail businesses and county-level cultural tourism projects to solve capital turnover problems of sinking market enterprises. It also encourages high-quality urban commercial brands to expand into county areas, upgrade county business districts and convenient consumption scenarios, and enrich local consumption supply.
Industry analysts said that urban consumption tends to be saturated, while the county sinking market boasts a huge consumer base and serves as the core incremental space for domestic consumption growth. The joint policy empowers county consumption development through financial support and industrial optimization, activating idle consumption potential, stabilizing the operation of small and medium-sized consumption entities, consolidating the foundation of domestic demand recovery, and promoting coordinated urban and rural consumption development to drive sustained macroeconomic growth.
