Guangdong moves to further unleash economic vitality

Guangdong province announced on Thursday new measures and policy updates to boost market confidence, economic vitality and high-quality development.

Offering more support for local enterprises, the move covers various fields including manufacturing, foreign trade, rural vitalization, self-employed businesses and finance, said Hu Hong, deputy Party secretary of Guangdong, at a news conference in the province's capital Guangzhou.

Hu said there are 22 updates in the policy package targeting enterprises, including supporting industries paying value-added taxes, reducing financing guarantee costs for smaller enterprises and further exempting taxes on new energy vehicle purchases.

It also contains 25 new measures, including incubating more quality enterprises, pushing forward standardization of preliminary work among investment projects in seven key sectors and reducing highway tolls.

In addition, 12 measures are extensions from previous effective policies, including reductions of value-added taxes for some taxpayers and support for major foreign-invested projects.

The move is aimed at stabilizing external demand while further expanding domestic demand and providing a sound business environment for market players, Hu said, adding that though an accelerated economic recovery has been witnessed recently, there are quite a number of enterprises still facing difficulties.

The policy package on foreign trade includes the full resumption of land transport between Guangdong and Hong Kong to pre-COVID-19 levels and efforts for increasing sea and air routes, said Sun Bin, deputy director of the provincial commerce department.

"Apart from the full resumption of hosting the China Import and Export Fair, or the Canton Fair, offline, 242 overseas trade shows are planned this year to help enterprises achieve more orders," Sun said.

Lending to foreign trade companies will be facilitated and export credit insurance will be significantly expanded, he added.

Ni Quanhong, deputy director of the Guangdong Financial Supervisory Authority, said new social financing in the province is expected to amount to 4 trillion yuan ($580.2 billion) this year, a year-on-year increase of 500 billion yuan.

Guangdong is seeing more positive signs of economic recovery in sectors such as cultural and tourism consumption and investment projects, according to a report by the provincial statistics bureau.

However, the contracting external demand and domestic consumption restrained by the recovering employment and income levels are still challenges in need of solutions, the report said.

The rebound in offline consumption and services scenarios is expected to outpace that of the manufacturing sector by the first quarter of this year, it added.

The industrial sector is projected to continue to pick up in the second quarter thanks to related supportive measures and a low comparison base last year. The sector is expected to get back on a normal track in the second half, the report said.