Power generation in China likely to drop further in April

Special
Report: Global Financial Crisis

BEIJING, May 5 (Xinhua) -- China's power generation is likely to have
fallen 4 percent year on year in April, indicating an economic recovery is still
some way off, Tuesday's China Daily reported.

The estimated figure would signal a larger decline than that in March, when
power output fell 0.7 percent to 286.7 billion KWh, Xue Jing, director of the
statistics and information department under the China Electricity Council told
the paper.

Official figure for April is expected to come out later this month.

As an important barometer of the economy, the country's power generation is
till fluctuating at the bottom level, according to Xue.

Data from State Grid Corp of China (SGCC), the country's main power
transmission company, showed national power generation in terms of the daily
average dropped by 3.9 percent from April 11 to 20, when compared with the same
period last year.

The fall was larger than the 3.5 percent drop seen from the first ten days
in April.

"Figures for the last 10 days of April are not optimistic, as there has
been no big recovery in industrial power consumption, which accounts for a large
part of the total power usage," said a source with SGCC.

Although the rate of decline in April may be faster than that in March, the
big drop in power generation overall has been halted, said Chang Jianping, an
official with the State Electricity Regulatory Commission.

"We expect the situation to get better after May," he said.