BEIJING, July 14 (Xinhua) -- China's electricity consumption, a barometer of economic activity, rose 6.3 percent year on year to 438.4 billion kilowatt hours in June, an official statement said Sunday.
The National Energy Administration (NEA) said in a statement on its website that the growth rate was 2 percentage points higher than a year earlier and 1.3 percentage points higher than the pace of May.
In the first six months, power consumption increased 5.1 percent from the same period last year to 2.5 trillion kilowatt hours, the NEA said.
The rate was down from a 5.5-percent growth seen in 2012, showing the country's economy may be losing momentum.
China's gross domestic output (GDP) expanded 7.7 percent year on year in the first quarter this year, down from 7.9 percent reported in the last quarter of 2012, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
The bureau schedules to release GDP data for the second quarter this Monday.
The purchasing managers' index (PMI) for the manufacturing sector fell to 50.1 percent in June from 50.8 percent in May, slightly above the boom-bust line of 50 percent, data showed.
Electricity used by the service sector saw a rapid growth of 9.3 percent during first half, while the industrial sector consumed 4.9 percent more than a year ago.
The agricultural sector witnessed a slight drop of 0.8 percent in its power use. Residential power use increased 3.9 percent year on year, the authority said.
China added 32.43 million kilowatts of power production capacity in the first six months, including 8.89 million kilowatts of hydropower and 15.85 million kilowatts of thermal power, the NEA added.
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