China to further develop household service industry

China will further promote the development of its home-based service sector including housekeeping, elder care and childcare services by expanding the scale and upgrading the service quality, and thus cultivate new growth point of the country's service consumption, said a new guideline released by the Ministry of Commerce and eight other entities on Friday.

A series of measures have been proposed to improve the quality of household service supply, promote convenient consumption and optimize the consumption environment of the sector, according to the guideline.

The government will encourage household service enterprises to expand into emerging service areas such as professional deep cleaning, indoor air treatment and nutritional consulting, and strengthen integrated development with sectors such as decoration and home furnishings, the guideline said.

"Home-based service serves as an important industry that helps promote consumption, benefit people's livelihoods and stabilize employment," said Kong Dejun, director of the Department of Trade in Services and Commercial Services at the ministry.

"We will help accelerate the digitalization of the sector and cultivate more platform-based companies and raise the efficiencies of supply-demand matching," Kong said.

China has over 30 million household service providers such as nannies and housekeepers. Last year, total revenues of the sector in the country were 1.23 trillion yuan ($168.5 billion), up 6 percent year-on-year, the ministry said.

The number of those aged 60 and above has exceeded 300 million, and the over-65 population has topped 220 million. Besides, China has some 30 million aged below 3, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Kong added that many Chinese families have rigid demand for home-based service. The sector has a large capacity and provides broad employment opportunities for migrant workers from rural areas. Its growth is expected to promote rural revitalization and service consumption, and contribute to economic growth.

zhuwenqian@chinadaily.com.cn