Next year's focus on recovery and reform

The Central Economic Work Conference that concluded in Beijing on Friday indicated that the country will continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy, while maintaining the necessary support for economic recovery.

The country's fiscal policies will focus on boosting innovation, expediting economic restructuring, rationalizing wealth distribution and resolving local government debts.

Monetary policies will be prudent and flexible so that the economy can recover robustly without baking risks.

It was important that the conference reiterate the urgency of advancing financial reform, improving the legal framework for the bond market, maintaining the country's financial support for innovation, small and micro businesses and green development, and deepening market-oriented reform of the exchange rate.

That means although the policies customized to cushion the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will not be quickly withdrawn, their accuracy, efficiency and flexibility will be enhanced.

It is necessary to pay more attention to deepening reform and opening-up to enhance the endogenous driving force of development.

To some extent, the projected rebound of the economy next year will create a window of opportunity for the country to crack the hard nuts in its reforms.

To harness that opportunity, the conference has called for increasing people's incomes and boosting public welfare and social security, and improving the self-reliance of the country's supply chains, which has hit the nails on their heads, as this timely responds to the slowdown in the growth rate of consumption, as well as the pressure the country faces from trade frictions and geopolitical competition.

Without stronger household spending power or more independent yet open supply chains, the reforms in many other fields will have their hands and feet bound.

It is to be hoped the to-do list the conference rolled out can be effectively carried out in the coming year to help the world's second-largest economy steer clear of the submerged reefs.

21st Century Business Herald