A shopping festival is launched in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province on Aug 20 to further stimulate consumption in the city. [Photo/ifeng.com] 

Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang province recently launched a shopping festival, as the city looks to further stimulate consumption in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As of July, Ningbo's consumption market had recovered to 95.6 percent of that in the same period last year, much better than expected, said Yin Qiuping, director of the consumption promotion department at the Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Commerce.

However, the city's consumer market still has great potential waiting to be tapped, in particular, in the sectors of catering, accommodation and entertainment, and many merchants are suffering from overstocking issues due to the pandemic, he noted. 

It was for these reasons that the shopping festival was launched on Aug 20. A series of promotional activities are slated to be held both online and offline across the city until October. 

On Aug 20, a total of 13 million yuan ($1.88 million) in coupons issued by the city were snapped up just 10 minutes after being released on payment platforms such as Alipay and UnionPay. 

Coupons with a combined value of 48 million yuan are set to be released amid the festival. Most shops situated in Laowaitan, a commercial block in downtown Ningbo, have signed up for the campaign. Laowaitan was recently included in a pilot program to construct national level pedestrian streets. 

The shopping festival is not a “price war”, but a move to empower physical stores with the digital economy and promote new consumption patterns via live streams, pointed out a head official from the Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Commerce.