A view of Liede Bridge in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province on July 16, 2022. Photo: VCG

South China's Guangdong Province on Wednesday rolled out a series of new measures to boost consumption, including efforts to promote residents' spending on tourism, home appliances, and cars, as well as measures to promote the sound development of housing consumption and to encourage issuance of consumption coupons.

Guangzhou and Shenzhen will further improve their regulations for car purchases and increase the car purchase quotas.

Guangdong vowed to fully implement plans to halve the vehicle purchase tax for passenger cars that meet the requirements and to lower value added taxes for selling used cars.

It also plans to promote the sound development of housing consumption, including measures to expand the supply of subsidized rental homes and further optimize the use of the housing provident fund.

The province also encouraged cities to continue issuing consumption coupons with a discount rate of up to 20 percent, to be used for catering, tourism, accommodation, sports and other areas.

Cities in Guangdong will be encouraged to proffer more preferential policies to boost residents' consumption in the tourism sector, and enhance development of the night economy.

Guangdong, as a major economic powerhouse in China, recorded GDP growth of 2 percent in the first half of the year despite the dual hit from the complex international environment and further epidemic outbreaks.

In the first six months, major economic indexes in Guangdong achieved positive growth. The added value for industrial enterprises reached 1.91 trillion yuan, up 3.5 percent from a year earlier, while the province's fixed asset investment was up by 1 percent. Retail sales gained 0.9 percent from a year earlier to 2.17 trillion yuan.

As one of the country's top foreign trade centers, the province posted 3.91 trillion yuan in foreign trade from January to June, up 2.8 percent year-on-year.

China achieved GDP of more than 56.26 trillion yuan from January to June, and Guangdong Province ranked first in terms of GDP among all mainland provinces.

In order to keep driving economic growth, the province is currently ramping up efforts to boost consumption, along with measures to contain any resurgence of the epidemic.

On Tuesday, Guangdong recorded 25 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, including five in Guangzhou and 20 in Shenzhen, as well as 21 silent carriers.