China's power consumption rises 9.5% in October

BEIJING -- China's electricity consumption, an indicator of economic activity, rose 9.5 percent year-on-year in October, official data showed on Thursday.

The growth was lower than September's 10.4-percent rise and August's 13.7-percent increase, according to data released by the National Energy Administration.

Wang Zhixuan, secretary general of the China Electricity Council, said slower electricity consumption in October is in line with market expectation of lower economic growth in the final quarter of the year.

China's gross domestic product growth accelerated to 7.8 percent in the third quarter, up from 7.5 percent in the April-June period and 7.7 percent in the first three months of the year.

Growth in the first nine months stood at 7.7 percent, above the government's full-year target of 7.5 percent and gives more room for promoting structural readjustment.

Wang said the government will make more efforts to curb excess production capacity in the fourth quarter in sectors including steel, cement, electrolytic aluminum, sheet glass and shipping, which are all big power users.

Thursday's figures also showed that total power consumption in the first 10 months rose 7.4 percent year on year to 4.38 trillion kilowatt hours (kwh).

During this period, electricity use by primary industry totaled 85.5 billion kwh, down 0.5 percent year on year. Power consumption by secondary industry reached 3.19 trillion kwh, up 6.7 percent. Consumption by tertiary industry marked the highest rate of growth of 10.6 percent, totaling 524.6 billion kwh. Urban and rural residents used 577.7 billion kwh of electricity, up 9.8 percent.

The CEC expected electricity consumption growth to fall from 10.9 percent in the July-September period to between 6.5 and 7.5 percent in the final quarter, and total power consumption growth for the whole year to be around 7 percent.