Beijing's poverty-relief supermarket aims to increase income of impoverished households

BEIJING -- A supermarket set up under a poverty alleviation program has opened in Beijing, with nearly 1,000 products from state-level impoverished counties.

The supermarket that opened earlier this week is located in Fengtai District and it is co-established by Beijing Capital Agribusiness & Foods Group and retail chain giant Wumart Stores, according to the state-owned assets supervision and administration commission of Beijing.

Products from some 90 state-level impoverished counties of seven provincial-level regions assisted by the Beijing Municipality are available in the supermarket, with the poverty-relief product section covering an area of 1,200 square meters.

Tea leaves from Hubei, mung beans from Inner Mongolia, bee honey from Guizhou and other products that were unsalable due to the COVID-19 epidemic have been stacked on the shelves.

Zhang Bin, CEO of Wumart Stores Inc., said a big data platform will be created, through which detailed sales and storage information will be shared with the business partners at the origins so that poverty-alleviation products can be timely sold.

According to the commission, from January to June, the consumption sales value for poverty alleviation reached nearly 10.7 billion yuan (about $1.5 billion) in Beijing, which had helped more than 270,000 households in Beijing-aided impoverished areas shake off poverty.