SHANGHAI: Hosting the World Expo will provide a boost for market confidence here, a local researcher said yesterday.

A State Council meeting on preparations for the expo, hosted by Premier Wen Jiabao, on Wednesday called for speeding up the construction of facilities, and asked organizers to provide top quality services to participants.

"As for me, this can be interpreted as a call to rally national support and global wisdom to host the Expo in a thrifty and orderly manner," Qiao Zhaohong, a researcher with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said.