ThePaper.cn:

As the Spring Festival approaches, we have noticed that the SAMR has recently intensified efforts to stabilize prices and ensure the quality of essential consumer goods during the holiday season. Could you please provide more details about this initiative? Thank you.

Pu Chun:

I will answer this question. The New Year and the Spring Festival represent traditional peak seasons for consumption, and the prices and quality of essential consumer goods are major concerns for all people. In order to ensure the stability of prices and the quality of important consumer goods during the New Year and the Spring Festival, and to guarantee that people can enjoy a joyful and harmonious start to the new year, the SAMR has stepped up efforts to stabilize prices and ensure quality during this period. This includes establishing regulatory lists for four major categories: food, industrial products, life services and pharmaceuticals, focusing on key areas of holiday consumption.

First, we will closely follow the consumption hotspots of New Year and Spring Festival, and strengthen the monitoring of price fluctuations. We will focus on key areas of consumption related to people's everyday lives, including rice, vegetables, fruit and heating-related issues. We will concentrate on holiday-related consumption, including rice, flour, cooking oil, vegetables, meat, eggs, dairy products, New Year's Eve dinner reservations, cultural and entertainment activities, hotel bookings, transportation logistics, as well as the increased demand for medicine and energy due to cold weather. We will conduct thorough online and offline price monitoring and tracking analysis to make informed judgments.

Second, we will strengthen the enforcement of price regulation laws to stabilize market price levels. We will closely monitor early signs and trends of issues that emerge, proactively estimate potential risks that may affect market order, increase the frequency of market inspections, and effectively intensify regulatory efforts on the prices of key consumer goods.

Third, we will strictly control food quality and safety, guarding the red line of consumption safety. We will fully leverage the mechanism that targets differentiated responsibilities to ensure effective results, intensify efforts to see that all responsibilities are fulfilled, namely, the primary responsibility of the enterprise itself and the regulatory responsibility of the government in the locality where the enterprise is located, precisely prevent and control risks, decisively eliminate issues such as the sale of expired, spoiled and counterfeit or substandard food, and rigorously guard against regional and systemic food safety problems. Efforts will be intensified to identify potential quality and safety hazards, with a focus on industrial clusters, wholesale markets and rural markets. We will conduct continuous inspections of potential hazards in product quality and safety, strengthening quality supervision and spot checks, implementing a "ledger-style" management approach, and effectively eliminating quality and safety hazards.

Market regulation departments across various regions, fully considering local consumption characteristics, are making full use of a tiered regulatory toolbox. They comprehensively employ methods such as reminders, administrative guidance and administrative law enforcement. This includes the launch of a platform for price and fee regulation, monitoring and early warning services, organizing supermarket and department store price policy reminder briefings, conducting a series of actions, such as regulation on food safety, rectification of safety hazards in special equipment, and addressing quality and safety issues in gas appliances. These actions aim to guide business entities to operate in accordance with the law and regulations. As of Jan. 16, market regulation departments across the country had deployed inspection personnel on a total of 481,100 visits, inspecting 322,100 units. In terms of pricing, 252 cases had been filed, resulting in 80 penalized cases with a total amount of 533,600 yuan being penalized or returned. In terms of product quality, 1,108 cases had been filed, resulting in 279 penalized cases with a total penalty amount of over 2.62 million yuan. In terms of food safety, 2,681 cases had been filed, resulting in 2,197 penalized cases with a total penalty amount of around 10.74 million yuan. Thank you.