Residents buy food and supplies at a supermarket in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province, on March 24. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Hefei Municipal Government passed a plan to distribute coupons worth 100m yuan ($14.11 million) to boost consumption on April 22.

The city finance will give the catering, retail, home appliance, automobile and sports sectors coupons worth 30 million yuan, 20 million yuan, 20 million yuan, 30 million yuan and 5 million yuan, respectively, to help them recover from the COVID-19 epidemic.

The coupons can be used at department stores and home appliance stores across the city, and can be used along with the stores' own discounting activities.

Catering stores are encouraged to combine online ordering and offline consumption and shopping malls are encouraged to adopt popular online sale model via livestreaming platforms and video sharing platform Douyin and cooperate with internet influencers to help with marketing.

According to the business bureau, the coupons are expected to promote more intelligent and eco-friendly home appliances to local residents to replace with the old ones.