China's efforts to increase the income of urban and rural residents will put more money into people's pockets, ultimately encouraging consumption and driving economic growth, according to experts.
The country on Sunday unveiled a new plan to expand consumer spending. The plan is composed of 30 policies across eight sections, the first seven of which outline specific actions for implementation. The top priority is given to income enhancement for urban and rural residents.
Through multiple measures, the plan urges efforts to promote reasonable growth in wage income, expand channels for property income and increase farmers' income. Experts highlighted that the proposed measures cover people from all walks of life.
"A reasonable wage growth mechanism should be scientific and sustainable. It should cover all workers, and of course, I believe, it will give more attention to low-income workers," said Tian Xuan, dean of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University.
Wan Zhe, a professor of Beijing Normal University, said targeted incentives will be given to key groups, such as skilled personnel, new professional farmers, scientific researchers, entrepreneurs of small and micro companies, business managers, grassroots officials, as well as some disadvantaged communities, to increase their overall income.
The plan also aims to promote wage growth by strengthening employment support.
"Efforts should be made to lower the threshold for key groups to establish offices in entrepreneurial parks, encourage qualified localities to raise the cap for entrepreneurship loans, and study and roll out policies to support innovation and entrepreneurship parks, to leverage the multiplier effect of entrepreneurship to promote employment. By launching more targeted 'small and beautiful' recruitment activities, we'll seek to efficiently match job-seekers with job opportunities," said Chen Yongjia, an official with the employment promotion department under the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, speaking at a press conference on Monday.
Recognizing the importance of improving farmers' earnings, the plan also proposes to improve mechanisms for ensuring grain farmers' income and land appreciation distribution, as well as to develop new agricultural business entities and foster home-based, under-forest, and homestay economies.
Professor Wan said that more emphasis is being placed on the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas, such as promoting produce processing, rural tourism and rural e-commerce industries so that farmers can make more profit from a range of industrial value-added products and services.
China vows efforts to increase incomes in bid to spur consumption
