Agricultural products e-commerce expected to receive policy support, 13th Five-Year Plan focuses on modern agriculture
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee will be held on October 26, and the “13th Five-Year Plan” has become the focus of market attention. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out during a research visit to Zhejiang in May that during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, obvious breakthroughs should be made in accelerating the pace of agricultural modernization and other aspects. Agricultural products e-commerce, as an important part of agricultural modernization, is ushering in rapid development opportunities under the impetus of the “Internet Plus” strategy and is expected to receive further policy support.
According to an earlier introduction by the Ministry of Commerce, China's agricultural products e-commerce currently faces constraints in many aspects, including a non-concentrated market scale, incomplete infrastructure and unsound regulations. Going forward, policy support will be strengthened in areas such as agricultural product logistics and distribution, and the connection between agricultural product information platforms and supermarkets, to improve online and offline interaction. Institutions estimate that driven by the active move of agricultural products online, the market space thereby created will reach a scale of one trillion, and enterprises with channel and brand advantages will gain opportunities to increase market share.
Looking at past years, due to policy expectations such as the Central Rural Work Conference and the No. 1 Central Document, the broad agriculture theme has attracted high market attention. Compared with previous years, policy this year is expected to further boost the warming of the agriculture sector. It is understood that there are two major aspects of policy worth anticipating: First, as a key task deployed at this year's Central Rural Work Conference, the drafting by relevant parties of guiding opinions on promoting the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas is expected to be issued within the year. It is understood that in recent years China's integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in agriculture has not been high, with not only seriously insufficient competitiveness in the production link, but also enormous challenges in the processing link. Therefore, there is an urgent need to promote the integration of agriculture with other industries and accelerate the pace of agricultural modernization; Second, support policies for agricultural products e-commerce are expected to be increased. The Ministry of Commerce previously stated that China's online trading of agricultural products currently faces many difficulties. In response to these problems, the Ministry of Commerce will adopt five measures, including overall planning and regulating order, to promote the application and innovation of agricultural products e-commerce. Specifically, it will take promoting the organic integration of physical trading of agricultural products and e-commerce as its direction, and accelerate demonstration and cultivation work for agricultural products e-commerce. In addition, it will accelerate the building of e-commerce laws and regulations, strengthen logistics support, carry out rural commercial information services, and give full play to the national public service platform for agricultural products commercial information in connecting with large chain supermarkets, to better promote the circulation of agricultural products.
Rural e-commerce, as an emerging business format, has already penetrated the entire agricultural industry chain and has achieved remarkable results in reducing rural circulation costs and increasing the commercialization rate of agricultural products. Institutions believe that agricultural modernization, as a key area of “13th Five-Year Plan” development, is expected to receive further policy support. Agricultural products, as the terminal of the industry chain, have sales scale and profitability directly related to farmers' income, and therefore will become a key breakthrough area for policy.
On the company side, Nongproduct is the largest chain operator of agricultural products wholesale markets in China, with large comprehensive agricultural products wholesale markets and bulk agricultural products online trading markets in Shenzhen and many other large and medium-sized cities, with annual trading volume exceeding 25 million tons, accounting for about 7% of the national market share. It is currently vigorously expanding supporting services such as supply chain finance, food safety testing and cold-chain warehousing, as well as e-commerce business. In addition, the company's actual controller is the Shenzhen State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. Under the pressure of having its shares acquired by Sino Life, the pace of state-owned enterprise reform is expected to accelerate, and institutions believe there are expectations in areas such as introducing strategic investors, employee stock ownership and securitization of property assets. Yonghui Superstores operates fresh agricultural products, ranks among the top in China in connecting agriculture with supermarkets, and plans a private placement to introduce JD.com as its strategic investor to improve its industry chain layout.