Power consumption up

China's power consumption rose 7 percent year-on-year to 416 billion kWh in March, accelerating 0.3 percentage points from the January-February period, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said over the weekend.

For the first quarter of this year, electricity consumption rose only 6.8 percent from a year ago to 1.1655 trillion KWh, as shortened working days in January due to the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays cut industrial demand for energy, according to the NEA.

Compared with a year ago, the quarterly energy use growth was down 5.9 percentage points amid an economic slowdown.