Price governance is an important part of macroeconomic governance. In order to further deepen price reform and improve the price governance mechanism, the Central Office and the State Council have issued the "Opinions on Improving the Price Governance Mechanism" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"). What is the background of the issuance of the Opinion and what key measures have been deployed? The reporter interviewed relevant officials of the National Development and Reform Commission. Reporter: What is the background of the issuance of the Opinion? Answer: Price is the "bull's nose" of resource allocation efficiency under market economy conditions. In 2015, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Several Opinions on Promoting Price Mechanism Reform", which comprehensively deployed the deepening of price reform. In the past 10 years, price reform has been deeply promoted and significant results have been achieved. The price mechanism is mainly determined by the market and further improved. 97.5% of the prices of goods and services in the whole society are formed by the market, greatly optimizing resource allocation and effectively stimulating market vitality; In the past decade, the average annual increase in CPI in China has been around 1.6%, providing strong support for the healthy development of the economy and society; Establish a scientific and standardized government pricing mechanism; Innovation promotes green development pricing mechanism. In the new era and new journey, building a high-level socialist market economy system requires improving the price governance mechanism and better leveraging the role of price signals; To improve the macroeconomic governance system, it is required to perfect the price governance mechanism, guide the overall price level and the reasonable operation of important commodity prices; To better meet the needs of the people for a better life, it is required to improve the price governance mechanism and do a good job in ensuring the supply and stable prices of important livelihood commodities. To this end, the General Office of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council have issued "Opinions" to comprehensively plan and improve the price governance mechanism, clarify the direction of price work in the future period, and systematically deploy key tasks. Reporter: What are the principles and main contents of improving the price governance mechanism? Answer: The Opinion clearly states that improving the price governance mechanism should adhere to the following principles. One is to adhere to the direction of socialist market economy reform. All prices that can be formed by the market are entrusted to the market, promoting the efficient and smooth flow of advanced and high-quality production factors, and effectively serving the construction of a unified national market. Secondly, we must adhere to a systematic approach and implement comprehensive policies. The third is to adhere to problem orientation and reform and innovation. The fourth is to adhere to the rule of law in pricing. The full text of the Opinion covers various fields of price work such as price reform, price regulation, and price supervision. It deploys and improves four mechanisms, namely, improving the market price formation mechanism to promote efficient resource allocation, innovating the price guidance mechanism to serve the development and safety of key areas, improving the price regulation mechanism to maintain a reasonable level of prices, and optimizing the transparent and predictable market price supervision mechanism. Reporter: What are the key measures to improve the market price formation mechanism? Answer: The goal of establishing a sound market price formation mechanism is to build a market environment with complete systems, fairness, openness, and orderly competition, promote effective price formation, optimize resource allocation, stimulate market vitality, and enhance endogenous economic development. The Opinion proposes three key measures. One is to deepen the market-oriented reform of prices. We will steadily and orderly promote market-oriented reforms in key areas such as energy resources and transportation, allowing more prices to be formed by the market. The second is to accelerate the construction of key market areas. Promote the construction of important commodity spot and futures markets, optimize the rules for listing, trading, and supervision of futures varieties, and consolidate the foundation for market price formation. The third is to create a competitive and orderly market environment. Abolish price policies that hinder the construction of a unified national market and fair competition, and prevent improper government intervention in price formation; Effectively regulate the business scope of natural monopoly enterprises, prevent the use of monopoly advantages to extend to competitive links upstream and downstream, and create a market environment conducive to effective price formation. Reporter: What areas does the innovative price guidance mechanism mainly focus on? Answer: The "Opinions" closely focus on the "national interests" and "people's livelihood concerns", focusing on five key areas to play a guiding role in pricing, and striving to serve the implementation of major national strategies and solve the problem of people's livelihood pricing. One is to improve agricultural pricing policies. Establish a sound mechanism for ensuring the income of grain farmers through coordinated policies such as pricing, subsidies, and insurance, improve policies such as minimum purchase prices for rice and wheat, and subsidies for corn and soybean producers, stabilize the supply of policy based pig insurance, encourage local governments to explore and carry out vegetable and other variety insurance according to local conditions, and promote stable and safe supply of grain and important agricultural products. The second is to improve energy pricing policies. Establish and improve the pricing mechanism for regulating resources such as natural gas power generation and energy storage, improve the policy of nearby trading prices for new energy, the tiered electricity pricing system for key industrial sectors, improve the national unified green electricity certificate trading system, establish international standards and certification mechanisms for green energy, and promote the green and low-carbon transformation of energy. Thirdly, establish a sound pricing mechanism for public utilities. Clarify the boundary between government investment and user payment, and improve the pricing mechanism for public utilities; Promote progressive pricing for non residential water usage exceeding quotas, implement metering fees for garbage disposal, optimize sewage treatment fee policies, and promote sustainable development of public utilities. The fourth is to improve the pricing policy for public services. Improve the basic service fee policy for private inclusive elderly care and childcare institutions, strengthen the fee management of inclusive kindergartens, promote balanced and accessible public services, ensure the basic needs of the masses, and better meet diverse needs. Fifth, innovate public data pricing policies. Establish and improve data market rules that meet the needs of digital economy development. Accelerate the formulation of pricing policies that are in line with the characteristics of public data elements, and promote the efficient development and utilization of public data security. Reporter: What are the main goals and contents of improving the price regulation mechanism? Answer: The "Opinions" will promote the maintenance of a reasonable level of prices as the main goal of improving the price regulation mechanism, taking into account the overall price level and the prices of important commodities, mainly including three aspects. One is to strengthen the regulation of the overall price level. Strengthen the synergy between price policies and macro policies such as finance, currency, industry, and employment, and enhance the overall efficiency of price level regulation. The second is to consolidate the stable foundation of important commodity prices. Focusing on the entire chain of production, supply, storage, and sales, following the idea of ensuring stable prices through stable supply and promoting stable supply through stable prices, we aim to stabilize production, optimize supply, strengthen reserves, and facilitate smooth circulation, and establish a long-term mechanism to promote market price stability. Thirdly, we will strengthen the regulation of prices for important commodities. Coordinate and strengthen the joint guarantee and supply of important commodities between major production and sales areas and adjacent regions, increase reserve regulation efforts, strengthen expectation management and market supervision, and guide stable price operation. Implement a linkage mechanism between social assistance and security standards and price increases to ensure the basic livelihood of disadvantaged groups. Reporter: What are the specific manifestations of optimizing the market price supervision mechanism? Answer: The Opinion further optimizes the market price supervision mechanism, builds a transparent and predictable regulatory environment for business entities, and protects the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, which is manifested in three aspects. One is to regulate market price behavior. Comprehensively utilize announcements, guidelines, reminders, and warnings to promote the lawful operation of business entities; Explore the establishment of price behavior rules to provide clear compliance guidance for business entities. The second is to strengthen price supervision and inspection. Intensify price supervision and inspection efforts around important goods and services with high social attention, and investigate and punish price violations in accordance with the law. The third is to promote efficient collaborative governance. Strengthen the coordination and cooperation between industry and enterprise self-discipline, social supervision, and government regulation, and improve the diversified governance model. Reporter: What arrangements have been made in the Opinion to consolidate the foundation of price governance? Answer: Based on the requirements of deepening price reform and enhancing price governance capabilities, the Opinion has made arrangements from three aspects. One is to establish a sound price monitoring and early warning system. Closely focusing on the needs of macroeconomic regulation, enriching the variety of price monitoring, innovating monitoring methods, expanding monitoring channels, and continuously improving the timeliness and pertinence of price monitoring and early warning. The second is to strengthen cost supervision and investigation. Following the principle of emphasizing both constraints and incentives, we will improve the cost monitoring and review methods and operating procedures for different industries, establish an incentive mechanism to promote cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and better leverage the pre guidance role of cost monitoring and review. At the same time, strengthen the investigation of important commodity costs and improve the system of agricultural product cost investigation. The third is to improve pricing laws and regulations. Based on the practice of price reform, accelerate the formulation and revision of relevant laws, regulations and rules, and elevate the reform achievements into institutional provisions. (New Society)