BEIJING, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese authorities on Thursday issued a notice regarding improvements to the policies of duty-free shops aimed at boosting consumption.

Effective this Saturday, the policies are designed to encourage consumers to shop in the country, according to the notice jointly issued by the Ministry of Finance and four other government departments.

The measures mainly focus on four aspects, including optimizing the tax-refund and duty-free policies, as well as further expanding the range of products available in duty-free shops.

The notice encourages duty-free shops to purchase more latest and hot-selling commodities including mobile phones, micro-drones, sporting goods, health food, and pet food, so as to enrich tourists' shopping choices.

Efforts will also be made to relax the approval authority and fine-tune facilitation and supervision measures for duty-free shops, said the notice.

Particularly, qualified enterprises operating duty-free shops are encouraged to buy more high-quality and featured domestic goods, the notice said. It added that purchasing such goods and selling them at certain duty-free stores shall be regarded as exports, and value-added tax and consumption tax shall be refunded or exempted.

These stores are also encouraged to provide online booking services, and commodities booked at downtown duty-free shops can be picked up at the entry ports stores, the notice said. Enditem