Illustrative image (Photo: VNA) Acting Director of the municipal Department of Industry and TradeTran Thi Phuong Lan said that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sharp decreasein the buying power due to lower per capita income.
Thanks to several stimulus programmes to boost consumer spending such as theconcentrated promotion month, Hanoi Promotion Month 2021, and Vietnamese GoodsWeeks, the capital city’s total retail sales of goods and services in thefourth quarter of 2021 was higher than that of the third quarter. However, the totalretail sales of goods and services in 2021 was down 4.6 percent compared tothat of the previous year.
As the lunar New Year is usually the best time in a year forretail firms to make breakthrough growth, they are exerting efforts to takeadvantage of this occasion.
Major supermarkets such as VinMart and Co.opmart plan tooffer discounts of up to 50 percent on thousands of products.
E-commerce platforms like Sendo, Shopee, Lazada and Tiki arealso carrying out attractive promotion programmes to stimulate the purchasingpower.
Along with consumer stimulus, Dr. Ngo Tri Long, former directorof the Ministry of Finance's Price and Market Research Institute, proposed theGovernment issue solutions to promote the purchasing power through tax and feereduction packages to reduce product prices.
Lan asked retail systems and firms to control the quality ofdiscounted products and ensure food safety and hygiene.
She also stressed the need for a close coordination between Statemanagement agencies in guiding and monitoring promotion activities to ensurethe publicity, transparency and effectiveness of these programmes as well asconsumers’ interests./.
VNA
