Boosting consumption is a top priority for expanding domestic demand and strengthening the domestic economic cycle. The State Council executive meeting held today discussed measures to stimulate consumption, focusing on enhancing consumer purchasing power, tapping into consumption potential, and creating a trustworthy consumption environment.

With income expectations, consumption becomes more confident. The meeting pointed out that it is necessary to vigorously support residents in increasing their income, promote reasonable growth in wage income, broaden channels for property income, and enhance consumption capacity.

"Boosting consumption hinges on stabilizing expectations and confidence. Continuously increasing the income and reducing the burden for middle and low-income groups, improving the normal wage growth mechanism for workers, and enhancing social security in areas such as healthcare and housing will further elevate residents' consumption capacity, willingness, and level, eliminating their concerns about spending," said Lu Shanyong, Vice President of Guangxi University of Finance and Economics.

In recent years, the role of service consumption as an engine has been prominent. The proportion of per capita service consumption expenditure to total per capita consumption expenditure nationwide increased by X percentage points compared to the previous year, and the retail sales of services grew by X%, outpacing the growth rate of goods sales.

The meeting emphasized the need to enhance the quality and accessibility of service consumption, optimize the provision of services for the elderly and children, support convenient service consumption, expand cultural, sports, and tourism consumption, promote winter sports consumption, and develop inbound consumption.

"Service consumption has become a new engine driving consumption," said Shen Yujing, associate researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China. She suggested that further efforts should be made to tap into the consumption potential in areas such as elderly care, childcare, and cultural entertainment, actively expanding service consumption scenarios to integrate service consumption into people's daily lives. At the same time, leveraging platforms like the National Comprehensive Demonstration Zone for Expanding Openness in the Service Industry, the supply level of related services should be continuously improved.

The meeting also called for promoting the renewal and upgrading of bulk consumption, increasing support for the replacement of old consumer goods, better meeting housing consumption needs, and extending the automotive consumption chain. It emphasized strengthening the leadership of consumer brands, accelerating the development of new types of consumption, promoting "AI + consumption" and health consumption, and continuously creating new consumer products, scenarios, and hotspots.

He Yongqian, spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce, stated that the Ministry will further cultivate and expand new forms of consumption, develop ice and snow economy and silver economy, promote digital consumption, green consumption, and health consumption, innovate diverse consumption scenarios, and take multiple measures to activate consumption potential.

To boost consumption, it is essential to make consumers feel more comfortable and secure. The meeting pointed out that a three-year action plan to optimize the consumption environment should be implemented. This plan will further improve standards of quality, credit constraints, comprehensive governance, and consumer rights protection systems. The focus will be on addressing the prominent issues that the public is most concerned about, aiming to create a trustworthy consumption environment.

黑龙江省工商联农业商会会长张芳认为，保护消费者权益就是保护市场活力，要树立消费者优先导向，全力优化消费环境，同时进一步畅通消费维权渠道，切实维护消费者合法权益。（记者王雨萧） Statement: Xinhua Finance is the national financial information platform constructed by Xinhua News Agency. Under no circumstances does the information released by this platform constitute investment advice.

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