Customers visit a duty-free shopping mall in Haikou, south China's Hainan Province, May 2, 2022. (Xinhua/Guo Cheng)
BEIJING, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- Two new duty-free stores have been given approval and will soon open business in Haikou and Wanning in South China's Hainan province, reported Economic Information Daily on Thursday.
Haikou is the capital city of Hainan, while Wanning is a county-level city in southeastern part of the island province.
The new stores bring the number of duty-free shops in Hainan to 12, and the total area of off-shore duty-free shops will be doubled to over 500,000 square meters, according to Yao Lei, an official with Hainan’s Department of Commerce.
The Haikou store, covering an area of more than 191,500 square meters, is set to open on October 28, 2022 and is expected to be one of the largest duty-free shops in the world. The 102,5000-square -meter Wanning store, now under construction, is expected to open in January 2023.
Yao said the new stores, with improved facilities and shopping environment, will attract more high-end brands and offer more shopping choices and better shopping experiences to consumers.
China eased the duty-free shopping quota to100,000 yuan in 2020, and expanded duty-free goods categories to 45, in a move to encourage tourism and domestic consumption, as Hainan island looks to establish itself as a major free trade port. The new policy applies to all passengers who leave the island by air, train and ship.
The policy support has boosted market growth. Tourists purchased duty-free products worth over 60 billion yuan (about 8.29 U.S. dollars) in Hainan in 2021, data from the provincial commerce authority showed.
(Edited by Li Shimeng with Xinhua Silk Road, lishimeng@xinhua.org)
A single purchase
