China's Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council holds a press conference on supporting the services sector, including restaurant, travel, sports and recreation industries, amid efforts to contain COVID-19.

According to Xian Guoyi, head of the Department of Trade in Service and Commercial Service of the Ministry of Commerce, after the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic, the operating revenue of accommodation and catering industries has declined significantly and thus increased the financial pressure of these enterprises. 

According to the survey conducted on more than 4,000 service enterprises, 22 percent said they had been launching support policies as of February 25, and some large-scale accommodation and catering enterprises have received loan support from the bank, which significantly eased the financial pressure.

According to Liu Kezhi, head of Department of Market Management of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, there are 39,000 travel agencies in China. As of February, 25, 35,000 of them have proposed to withdraw the quality guarantee deposit, accounting for 90 percent of the total number of travel agencies. The amount of refundable deposits reached eight billion yuan, and now 3.462 billion yuan has been refunded. From the feedback from the travel agencies, the policy of the deposit refund effectively eased the financial pressure of cash flow.