BEIJING: China has revised its gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate for 2008 to 9.6 percent from 9 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Friday.

That raised GDP for 2008 to 31.4045 trillion yuan from the previous figure of 30.067 trillion yuan, NBS director Ma Jiantang told a press conference.

The revised volume for the agriculture sector was 3.3702 trillion yuan, accounting for 10.7 percent of GDP, down from 3.4 trillion yuan.

The figure for the industrial sector was put at 14.9003 trillion yuan, accounting for 47.5 percent of GDP, larger than the earlier figure of 14.6183 trillion yuan.

The service sector figure was 13.1340 trillion yuan, accounting for 41.8 percent of GDP. It was up from 12.0487 trillion yuan.

The GDP growth for 2009 would be calculated based on the revised GDP volume but would have little impact on the GDP expansion estimates, Peng Zhilong, head of department of national accounts of the NBS, said.

The revision came at a time when China's economy is on the track to hit 8 percent growth in 2009, fueled by the government's 4-trillion-yuan stimulus package unveiled November 2008 to help the economy weather the affects of the global economic downturn.

China recalculated its GDP growth for 2007 earlier this year to 13 percent from the previous 11.9 percent, thus overtaking Germany to become the world's third largest economy.

The latest revision was released after China finished its second national economic census, which started in October last year to gather basic information of all industrial and service-sector entities operating in 2008.

The census is conducted every five years and the latest one aimed at helping form the basis of the social and economic development blueprint for the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).