A car exhibition in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on October 1, 2023 Photo: VCG

The National Administration of Financial Regulation (NAFR), China's newly integrated financial regulator, has issued a document outlining measures to support the recovery in consumption, including boosting the auto market and lowering the cost of consumer finance.

The NAFR called on banks, financial firms and insurance companies across the nation to develop diversified consumer products, improve the quality of retail services, meet the reasonable consumer credit needs of residents, and better serve the real economy through differentiated financial services.

The document highlighted policy support to further activate the domestic auto market, including optimizing and simplifying auto loan procedures, increasing the supply of financial services in the auto sector and granting more support in the new-energy vehicle sector.

The document also discussed regulating the pricing mechanism for financial services and accelerating the digitalization of the financial market, in a bid to reduce the cost of consumer finance.

Financial support for manufacturing, technology innovation, and the transport and logistics sectors will be increased, along with more support for small and medium-sized private enterprises that can create more jobs, said the NAFR.

During the just passed eight-day Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays, a total of 458 million passenger trips were made nationwide, with 57.277 million passenger trips per day on average, representing an average daily increase of 57.1 percent year-on-year, according to China's Ministry of Transport.

Experts said people's suppressed consumption potential has begun to be released, even exceeding the pre-epidemic level in some areas, as the gloom of the epidemic continues to evaporate and consumer confidence continues to grow.

China's non-manufacturing purchasing managers' index in September hit 51.7 percent, 0.7 percentage points higher than in August, showing strong momentum for the country's consumption recovery.

Global Times