Wuhan restarts: Measures announced to boost consumption

A poster of the consumption coupon issued by the Wuhan municipal government and Alipay. China Daily/Asia News Network

BEIJING — Wuhan has unveiled a series of measures to ensure people’s livelihood and support small, medium and micro-sized enterprises.

The local government of Wuhan has started to work with online platforms to offer a total of 2.3 billion yuan in coupons from April 19 to July 31 to stimulate its consumer market, with 500 million yuan from the municipal government.

The first batch of coupons worth 72 million yuan has been issued via Alipay on April 19, according to the official social media account of the Wuhan government on Sina Weibo.

Consumption coupons can be used in catering, shopping malls, supermarkets or convenience stores, as well as culture and tourism.

Moreover, the city will build new online business forms such as cloud supermarkets, cloud entertainment and cloud education, and set up new retail scenes including new types of convenience stores, unmanned supermarkets, smart vending machines, contactless delivery and new trip modes, to promote consumption, vice-mayor of Wuhan Li Qiang said at a news conference on Sunday.

On April 18, the Wuhan government released 12 policies and measures to bail out small, medium and micro-sized enterprises in the city , including providing special loans, lowering and cutting some rents, taxes and fees, defer payment of social security funds, ensuring water and electricity supply and optimizing government services.

In late March, Wuhan announced the first 20 billion yuan fund to provide one-year interest-free loans to SMEs that are struggling due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

A few days ago, the local government announced it would set up another 20 billion yuan in special loans to SMEs, as well as providing financing guarantees and risk compensation funds to aid credit to these enterprises.