China will make more efforts this year to save energy and reduce emission in every sector of the national economy, Zhu Hongren, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said Monday.

"China's energy consumption per unit of GDP started to decline in the third quarter last year but still fell short of the energy-saving target set at the beginning of 2006," said Zhu, adding "the situation remains grave."

Zhu said the growth rate of heavy industry outran that of light industry by 4.1 percentage points for the whole of 2006, compared with a gap of 1.8 percentage points in the first half of 2006. The situation made it more difficult for the reduction of emissions.

The NDRC will urge enterprises across the country to push forward technical transformation in order to save more energy.

China will continue restructuring industries concerning coal, cement and aluminium and speed up eliminating backward production lines, technologies and products that involve high energy consumption, according to the NDRC.

(Xinhua News Agency January 30, 2007)