Image source: Xinhua News Agency
■ Xia Jinbiao, reporter of China Economic Times
As an important starting point for boosting consumption, automobiles are intensively introducing policies to boost automobile consumption. A few days ago, the Bureau of Commerce of Shantou City, Guangdong Province, issued the "Announcement of Shantou City's 2022 Automobile Consumption Subsidy Activities", from May 8 to June 30 this year, the sales of 100,000 yuan or more of the "National VI" standard light vehicles and new energy light vehicles, each car will be given a financial subsidy of 5,000 yuan. Previously, the Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform Commission issued the "Announcement of Subsidy Activities for the Purchase of New Energy Vehicles", and from May to June this year, individual consumers in the province were subsidized 8,000 yuan / new energy vehicle within the scope of the promotion model of the "Guangdong Provincial Automobile Trade-in Special Action". In addition, Guangdong Province also added 30,000 car purchase indicators to Guangzhou and 10,000 car purchase indicators to Shenzhen.
In addition to Guangdong Province, Jiangxi Province, Yunnan Province, Hainan Province, Zhejiang Province, Shandong Province, Chongqing Municipality, Shenyang City and other provinces and cities across the country have introduced policies related to automobile consumption promotion. For example, Jiangxi Province rewards and subsidies for individual consumers who buy new cars between May 1 and July 31 in a lottery, and the Shenyang municipal government invests 100 million yuan to issue car consumption subsidies to individual consumers (household registration is not limited) who buy cars in Shenyang.
Automobile is an important pillar industry of the national economy, the industrial chain is long, the role of driving economic growth is very obvious, is an important consumer goods for residents, accounting for about 10% of the total social consumption. According to the first quarter data of the National Bureau of Statistics, the retail sales of automotive consumer goods were 1,073.9 billion yuan, down 0.3% year-on-year, and the capacity utilization rate of the automobile manufacturing industry was 72.1%, down 6.4% year-on-year. Since April, some vehicle manufacturers and parts companies in Shanghai and Jilin, which are important cities in the automobile industry, have fallen into a state of suspension. At the same time, dealers in the sealed areas also stopped operating activities, and consumer demand declined. Industry insiders believe that under the background of pressure on both ends of supply and demand, pulling automobile consumption has become an urgent need to stabilize the basic disk of the automobile industry.
In fact, the central government has planned in advance and actively introduced a number of policies to promote bulk consumption, including automobiles. The executive meeting of the State Council held on April 13 pointed out that it is necessary to expand consumption in key areas and encourage bulk consumption such as automobiles and home appliances, and all localities must not add new car purchase restriction measures, and the gradual increase in automobile purchase restrictions has been implemented. The meeting also pointed out that it is necessary to support the consumption of new energy vehicles and the construction of charging piles.
On April 25, the State Council issued the "Opinions on Further Releasing Consumption Potential and Promoting the Sustained Recovery of Consumption", emphasizing the need to steadily increase bulk consumption such as automobiles, proposing to "consolidate and expand consumption in key areas, encourage qualified areas to carry out new energy vehicles and smart home appliances to the countryside, and promote brand consumption and quality consumption into rural areas".
At present, multiple departments of the State Council are working together to ensure the smooth coordination of the automotive industry chain and supply chain in an all-round way. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has built a supply chain coordination platform for key industrial chains such as automobiles, focusing on key areas such as the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, focusing on ensuring the coordinated production of upstream and downstream enterprises and ensuring the smooth operation of key industrial chains.
Industry insiders believe that compared with the supply of automobile production, the weakening of terminal demand is more difficult to recover, and it is urgent to introduce stimulus policies to promote terminal consumption as soon as possible. According to the latest issue of the "China Auto Dealers Inventory Warning Index Survey" released by the China Automobile Dealers Association, the inventory warning index of Chinese auto dealers in April 2022 was 66.4%, up 10 percentage points year-on-year, reaching the highest peak since March 2020.
It can be expected that with the introduction of automobile consumption-related policies in more places to promote the consumption of new energy vehicles and expand the replacement and upgrading of automobiles, the suppressed automobile consumption during the epidemic is expected to be released. However, it should be pointed out that whether automobile consumption can continue to recover depends on the economic environment in the end, and stimulating consumption can only be an auxiliary means. This means that even if the epidemic is stable and the production of car companies has entered normalization, it will still take a while for the auto terminal market to recover. The industry believes that although the auto market will show a warming trend in May, it will still appear to be relatively sluggish compared with the pre-epidemic situation. The China Automobile Dealers Association believes that as the epidemic improves in May, the previously suppressed demand for car purchases will be released, and it is expected that car sales in May will increase month-on-month, but due to the uncertainty of the epidemic, sales may fluctuate.
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