The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) today published a prediction on China's coal production, transportation and demand situation in 2006, forecasting that the country's coal supply and demand will basically strike a balance in gross volume with a relatively relaxed structure, and overall shortage or serious oversupply are unlikely to occur in the near future. However, NDRC does not rule out the possibility of shortage or overstock in some areas or in certain periods.

As China has achieved effective results in macro-control and greatly boosted development of circular economy and construction of a resource-saving society, the overly rapid increase of high energy-consuming products has been restrained, and energy-saving efforts of all social aspects are producing more obvious effects.

NDRC experts estimated that China's coal demand will slightly increase this year with the total volume reaching about 2.25 billion tons, and the pressure of excessive production capacity will gradually appear.

By the end of Apr. 2005, the checked production capacity of China's licensed coal mines had reached 2.26 billion tons. In addition, the country's coal production capacity has been climbing rapidly in recent years. In 2005 alone, the newly-added coal production capacity exceeded 60 million tons and there were more new and expansion projects in the coal industry.

Therefore, NDRC experts suggest that this year, the coal industry should reinforce coordination among coal production, transportation and demand, guarantee coal supply, strengthen and consummate production supervision, boost the reform of coal ordering system, improve the quality of the industry and ensure balance of coal supply and demand.

(China News Service March 21, 2006)