Post-epidemic consumption policy: need to guard against consumer environmental risks in consumer replenishment
□ Long Shaobo, the author of this article (Executive Deputy Dean of the China Institute of Economic Thought and Practice, Tsinghua University).Since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, domestic consumption has shown a clear trend, and the total retail sales of consumer goods in January-February 2019 has shown -20.5% growth rate.With the end of the epidemic and the acceleration of the resumption of production and production, there will be obvious consumption replenishment and potential release, but there will be no so-called “revenge” consumption “overshoot”.In the post-epidemic consumption supplement and potential release, there may be a risk that the consumption environment will deteriorate in the short term and damage the rights and interests of consumers.Therefore, after the epidemic, it is necessary to use the consumption guidelines and supervision of the consumption policy, synergize with other policies and combine the supply and demand consumption policies, and jointly prevent the risk of deterioration of the consumption environment through the formation of policy synergies, thereby better promoting consumption replenishment and potential releaseGive full play to the “ballast stone” effect of consumption on the economy.1. The short-term adverse impact of the new coronary pneumonia epidemic on consumption, and the press release of the joint prevention and control mechanism on March 18 on the promotion of consumption replenishment and potential release fully demonstrated the importance of the current promotion of consumption replenishment.According to the latest statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the total retail sales of consumer goods in this society in January-February 2020 has been growing continuously at -20.5%, a negative growth that is rare in history.Among them, except for grain and oil, Chinese and Western medicines, beverages and other daily necessities still maintained positive growth, other consumer goods have turned into a significant negative growth.It can be seen that affected by the new coronary pneumonia epidemic, residents have significantly affected consumption due to isolation in the short term.Due to the important role of consumption in compressing the “ballast stone” in the national economy, the gradual expansion of consumption growth will certainly have an adverse effect on economic growth.According to the calculation that residents’ consumption accounts for about 40% of the economy, it will bring the economic growth rate from January to February to 0.8 averages.Second, after the epidemic, there will be a consumption “cover-up” instead of “reported resurgence” consumption “overshoot”. However, it can be expected that the end of the transformation of the epidemic and the gradual recovery of economic activities will cause a significant replenishment of residents’ consumptionIt is expected that consumption will return to the medium-high growth rate before the epidemic.In fact, after the end of SARS in 2003, there was a significant rebound in consumption, and the growth rate of total retail sales of social consumer goods rose from 4 in May 2003.The lowest point of 3% rebounded to 9 in July 2003.8%, reaching the growth rate before SARS.According to this calculation, after the end of the new crown epidemic, the rate of growth of residents’ consumption will also be replenished to the level of 7% -8% before the epidemic, and there will be obvious consumption supplement and potential release.However, after the epidemic, there may not be a “revenge” consumption “overshoot” of more than 10% growth rate, which is essentially three: First, the change in consumption growth rate mainly depends on the change in residents’ income growth rate, and will not occur in the short term.The so-called large-scale “revenge” consumption “overshoot”.Consumption is a decision caused by factors such as consumer income, supply of consumer goods, and consumption environment, and its fundamental determinant is residents’ income.Empirical data shows that the growth rate of consumption changes in the same direction through changes in the growth rate of income.As China’s economy has shifted from high-speed growth to medium- and high-speed growth, the growth rate of residents ‘income and the growth rate of residents’ consumption have also dropped significantly to about 7% -8% before the epidemic.During the period of the epidemic, the short-term income of residents may be significantly affected by the wage cuts caused by the suspension of work and production.Second, some of the residents’ necessary consumption has immediate characteristics, and there will be no major “retaliatory” overshoot in the later period.For example, household food, oil, vegetables, fruits, fruits, meat and other foods and daily necessities during the epidemic will not be able to resume a large amount of consumption once in the early stage and will not rebound in the future.Third, new consumption patterns, new formats, and new scenarios have released some consumption, and this part will no longer retaliate.During the epidemic, some non-essential offline scene consumption has been basically satisfied through offline to online mode, and there is no need to report recurring consumption again.Therefore, the consumption of residents after the epidemic is more likely to show a “recovery” consumption rebound, rather than “revenge” consumption “overshoot”.Even so, the intensity and extent of the consumption rebound after the epidemic are very impressive.Due to the serious drop in consumption growth rate in the epidemic situation, the overall rebound in consumption after the epidemic situation may be caused (from -20.5% rose to 8%, which is equivalent to a range of nearly 30%).Moreover, the consumer replenishment field will mainly focus on construction and decoration materials (-30.5%), furniture (-33.5%), cars (-37%), gold and silver jewelry (-41.1%) and other large-scale durable consumer goods industries and catering (-43.1%), tourism and other service industries. These industries are the industries that are most explored under the influence of the epidemic. They are suppressed and frozen consumption. They are also the industries that have the largest follow-up consumption supplements and release of consumption potential.Third, there is a risk that the consumption environment will deteriorate in the short term after the epidemic. However, in the process of gap compensation and potential release in these industries, due to various factors, there may be short-term, aggravating consumption environment and damage to consumptionThe risks of the rights and interests of investors need special attention and prevention.First, the product supply chain problems brought about by the early domestic shutdown and anti-epidemic disease and the current spread of overseas epidemics may cause some products and services to have an imbalance in supply and demand, thereby causing unreasonable price increase and damaging consumer interests.Unlike SARS in 2003, New Coronary Pneumonia has already occurred in most countries around the world, and the external environment has an effect coefficient on its consumption.The supply of upstream components and raw materials for some of these products comes from abroad, and the production of anti-epidemic drugs has been gradually stopped in foreign countries and gradually entered into the supply of some consumer products, resulting in a certain degree of substitution.In the process of consumption replenishment, there may be unreasonable price increases by manufacturers in disguise and sales activities with sub-prime charges, thereby damaging consumers’ vital interests and deteriorating the consumption environment.Second, changes in consumer habits and expectations may increase the proportion of consumer complaints.During the anti-epidemic process, the people who were used to offline consumption turned to online consumption due to the limitations of the epidemic situation, so new consumption substitutions and new consumption habits were formed.Therefore, some online consumption habits of consumers after the epidemic continue to resume, and the proportion of online shopping consumption will increase significantly compared with that before the epidemic.Online shopping has always been a key area of consumer complaints, so it is necessary to focus on the damage to consumer rights caused by changes in the online shopping environment.Third, the closure, merger or transfer of some small companies in the epidemic may cause some complaints to be postponed and concentrated.During the epidemic, small companies in some industries may fail due to capital flow and product sales, mergers or transfers, and problems with products and services purchased by consumers are likely to occur after the end of the epidemic, thereby bringing consumersProblems such as difficulties in safeguarding rights protect the interests of consumers and deteriorate the consumption environment.Fourth, post-epidemic consumption policies need to form a joint force to prevent consumption environmental risks. Therefore, it is recommended that during the process of resuming production and production and for a period after the end of the epidemic, consumption policies need to pay special attention to the risk of temporary deterioration of the consumption environment that may exist in the process of consumer replenishmentIn particular, it is necessary to form synergy through consumption policies to maintain a good consumption environment, thereby better promoting consumption replenishment and potential release.First, make good use of the consumption guidance role of the consumption policy, and improve the consumption environment by strengthening market-level supervision.The highest, through higher frequency and timely release of data and cases of consumption environment monitoring, supervision, complaints, etc., so as to provide consumers with safe consumption guidelines for consumption.At the same time, strengthen the enforcement of the consumer environment, especially in the areas of online consumption and consumer replenishment, strengthen the inspection and enforcement of laws, severely crack down on infringement of consumer rights and interests, and purify the consumer environment.Second, it aims at synergy between consumption policies and other economic policies.For example, consumption policies need to be combined with industrial policies to work together to maintain the consumption environment.For the product problems caused by insufficient parts supply caused by overseas epidemic situation, industrial policies or reorganization are needed to overcome in the long run, but in the short term, industry regulatory self-discipline and market supervision departments are required to conduct sampling inspection and supervision of production substitution.As another example, in the resumption of production and production, the fiscal budget policy and monetary policy need to provide more financial and tax loan conditions for small and medium enterprises to overcome the difficulties, while the consumption policy needs a better geographical construction of business and consumption environment, so as to jointly reduce the factorsThe risk of loss of consumer rights and interests caused by the failure of an enterprise.Third, strengthen the combination of consumer supply policies and consumer demand policies.Under the conditions of epidemic control, the consumption supply policy provides residents with the necessary consumption supply venues, products and services by quickly promoting the resumption of production and business operations of commercial and trade enterprises, thus combining it with consumer demand policies that stimulate consumer demandGood release of consumer demand.Moreover, in areas where the epidemic prevention and control measures have improved significantly, it is necessary to encourage the opening rate of shopping malls, supermarkets, and chain stores, to take advantage of increased market supply, and a variety of consumer competition mechanisms to maintain reasonable consumer prices and protect consumer rights.Sauna Night Editor Zhao Ze proofreading Chen Diyan