China's power consumption in July rose 6 percent to 342 billion kilowatt hours over the same month of last year, said China's National Energy Administration (NEA) Friday.

The figure was 10.9 percent more than that of June, NEA said.

However, the total power consumption in the first seven months declined 0.89 percent from a year earlier to reach 1.99 trillion kwh.

During the first seven months, power consumption of agriculture went up by 5.05 percent to 53.4 billion kwh, and that of service trade was up 10.37 percent to 215.8 billion kwh. But the use of industry decreased 4.26 percent to 1.47 trillion kwh.

Power generation, another important measure of industrial activities, expanded 4.8 percent in July from a year earlier, said the National Bureau of Statistics Tuesday.

This is the second consecutive month electricity generation in China has grown after eight consecutive months of decline from last October.

(Xinhua August 14, 2009)