Nine government departments support accelerating the innovative development of the retail sector

The guidelines on accelerating the innovative development of the retail sector, recently issued by the Ministry of Commerce and eight other departments, were publicly released on July 9.

The guidelines set new work objectives, striving to basically form a modern retail system with rational layout, high-quality supply, diverse business forms, smart convenience and orderly competition by 2030, build a number of highly driving retail scenarios, launch a number of integrated and innovative business models, and cultivate a group of internationally competitive retail enterprises.

The guidelines define key new tasks, covering aspects such as systematically planning new layouts, leading new retail supply, creating new consumer demand, and stimulating new drivers of retail development, supporting retail enterprises to become stronger, better and larger, and providing directional guidance for the innovative transformation and high-quality development of the retail industry.

The guidelines optimize the new competition environment. In response to the problems existing in the competition of online and offline retail markets, they put forward specific requirements from the aspects of promoting fair competition, strengthening price governance, and advancing unified supervision, including rigid constraints such as strengthening anti-monopoly review, standardizing price behaviors, implementing integrated online and offline supervision, and rectifying false publicity and shifting promotional costs.

The guidelines strengthen new supporting policies. From the aspects of land use guarantee, financing support, tax reduction and burden alleviation, approval optimization, and law-based market governance, they enhance policy integration, solve the urgent and prominent problems affecting the development of the retail industry, promote the concentration of resource factors toward physical retail, the inclination of policy measures to physical retail, and the strengthening of work force for physical retail, so as to get through the "last mile" of policy implementation.

Source: Xinhua News Agency