Recently, the 2024 China Economic Annual Report was released. The "three horses" are running steadily, demonstrating the resilience and vitality of our country's economy. Among them, the national fixed asset investment (excluding farmers) was 5,143.74 billion yuan, an increase of 3.2% over the previous year. Among the investment "big market", there is one data worth paying attention to: investment in purchasing equipment and tools increased by 15.7%, accelerating by 9.1 percentage points over the previous year, driving the growth of all investment by 2.2 percentage points.

The purchase data of equipment and equipment is an important indicator for observing the progress of equipment updates in my country. In March last year, the State Council issued a plan to make systematic deployments to promote large-scale equipment updates. Subsequently, many places issued policy rules around key areas such as industry, transportation, and education. In July, several measures to strengthen support for the "two new" were introduced, and 150 billion yuan of ultra-long-term special treasury bond funds were allocated to support equipment updates in key areas... With the joint efforts of all parties, large-scale equipment updates have continuously made new progress and new results.

The significance of large-scale equipment updates is not only to drive investment growth, but also to promote industrial upgrading and other aspects. In 2024, the added value of the equipment manufacturing industry above designated size increased by 7.7% compared with the previous year, 1.9 percentage points higher than that of all industries above designated size; the added value of the ship and related equipment manufacturing, radio and television equipment manufacturing, lithium-ion battery manufacturing and other industries increased by 19.3%, 16.1% and 8.2% respectively compared with the previous year. It can be said that promoting large-scale equipment renewal is not only conducive to meeting the development needs of enterprises, but also promoting the high-quality development of the industry.

The Central Economic Work Conference clearly requires the efforts to expand the implementation of the "two new" policies. Since January this year, a series of detailed implementation measures have been intensively introduced: for loan contracts, equipment purchase or renewal service procurement contracts signed before March 7, 2024, equipment renewal loans issued after March 7 will be included in the scope of financial interest subsidy policy support; efforts will be made to promote the electrification replacement of urban buses, renew urban buses with a age of 8 years or more and power batteries exceeding the warranty period, and the average subsidy per vehicle will be increased from 60,000 yuan to 80,000 yuan... This brings real benefits to relevant entities.

Equipment update, enterprises are the main body. The key to enhancing the enthusiasm of enterprises is to make full use of policies, further broaden financing channels, and reduce the cost of capital use. The practices from all over the country last year have accumulated a lot of valuable experience for this year's work. For example, Jiangsu launched a "equipment guarantee" with a total guarantee scale of 20 billion yuan, with a maximum guarantee amount of 50 million yuan for a single-family enterprise. For example, Guangdong Province and cities have jointly organized more than 100 industrial equipment renewal and technological transformation empowerment and improvement activities such as "Supply and Demand Bank" docking, financial empowerment and manufacturing industry "technical transformation services prefectures and cities". It should be seen that putting out more real money and strengthening supply and demand connection will help further clear policy bottlenecks and release potential demand.

For enterprises, the current opportunity is rare. This round of equipment updates accurately anchor the development direction of high-end, intelligent and green. Intentional and aspiring enterprises should follow the trend, continue to increase R&D investment, accelerate the iteration and upgrading of products, and efficiently replace existing old equipment with brand new equipment. Small and medium-sized enterprises should take active actions, organically combine digital transformation with large-scale equipment renewal actions, technological transformation and upgrading projects, focus on the main business, work hard, and seize the initiative in development.

(Author: Nian Wei, provided by China Economic Network)