People saunter on Furong Street in Jinan, east China's Shandong Province, Jan. 2, 2023. Furong Street, a 500-meter-long old street with more than 150 food and beverage shops, is getting back to its hustle and bustle these days.(Photo: Xinhua)

Many Chinese provinces have pivoted to boosting domestic consumption and increasing residents' incomes in their 2023 government work reports, as experts projected a rapid economic rebounding from March.

Wuhu, the second largest city in East China's Anhui Province, vowed to ramp up consumption to propel economic development , by taking measures to increase residents' incomes and their buying power, according to the local government work report released on Wednesday.

The city set an annual GDP growth target of around 8 percent for 2023, aiming for retail sales to grow by 10 percent year-on-year and per capita disposable income to increase in line with the economic growth rate.

Jinan, capital city of East China's Shandong Province, said the city will promote sales of cars, electric appliances and other big-ticket items, and at the same time try to boost the innovative capability of local manufacturing sector.

Central China's Henan Province on Tuesday released specific measures to rebuild market confidence, encouraging cities to extend favorable car purchase policies to the end of March 2023, and it will grant subsidies of up to 5 percent of the price for each sold vehicle.

"As the most important festival after the optimization of anti-COVID measures, the Spring Festival holidays from January 21 to 27 is expected to see a consumption peak," Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research Institute, told the Global Times.

He said that a consumption revival will emerge in early 2023. "The further optimization of anti-COVID measures announced on December 7 by the central government has greatly elevated consumers' expectations for the economy this year," he said. Catering, accommodation, transport, tourism and entertainment sectors will gradually recover, which will buoy the growth of domestic consumption.

Along with the easing of the epidemic , macroeconomic policy implementation, the recovery of consumption and an improvement in residents' incomes, retail sales this year are expected to recover to the levels seen in 2021, Wang Peng, a research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

However, some challenges remain for the recovery of domestic demand in 2023. There are concerns that new variants in the US and Europe may trigger another wave of infections in China, while weakening overseas demand may have spillover effects on the Chinese economy. Also, long-standing problems in the real estate sector need to be solved.

He said that more efforts are needed to increase the household incomes of middle- and low-income families, stabilize employment, and quicken the pace of setting up a unified national marketplace.