Power consumption growth rebounds in May

China's power consumption in May reached 449.2 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), with 5.3 percent year-on-year growth, 0.7 percentage points higher than April, official data showed Saturday.

Compared with the first four months in 2014, China's power consumption growth rebounded for the first time this year.

Total electricity consumption in the first five months stood at 2.16 trillion kWh, an increase of 5.2 percent year-on-year, according to the National Energy Administration (NEA).

From January to May, power consumption by the primary industry dropped 5.8 percent year-on-year to 33.7 billion kWh, the data showed.

Meanwhile, consumption by the secondary and service industries rose 5.1 percent and 6.4 percent year-on-year to 1.58 trillion kWh and 259 billion kWh respectively.

The urban and rural residents' power consumption rose by 6.4 percent year-on-year to 286.7 billion kWh, according to the NEA.

The growth in power consumption in May was higher than April, but still lower than the 7.5 percent GDP growth target for this year, indicating the economy is improving but at a slower pace, Lin Boqiang, a professor at Xiamen University, was quoted as saying by the Xinhua News Agency on Sunday.

In the first five months, power consumption by the service industry and households surpassed that by the manufacturing industry, showing a better power consumption structure, financial news portal wallstreetch.com reported Sunday, calling it an achievement of economic restructuring.

The higher growth of power consumption of the service industry and a proportionate fall in the growth rate of consumption of the industrial sector is a trend developed countries have also gone through during their development, Zhou Dadi, executive vice chairman of the China Energy Research Society, was quoted by the Xinhua report.

Some policies released by the Chinese government since April, including preferential income tax policy for small and micro-enterprises and targeted reserve requirement ratio cut, have led to a rebound in the macroeconomic indicators, the report said.