China will maintain the stable and rapid economic development trend in the latter half of this year, said a spokesman with the State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC) Tuesday in Beijing.

Cao Yushu, spokesman with the SDRC said at a press conference on economic performance in the first half of this year that China's industrial and transportation sectors have been doing in the expected direction of the macro-economic control of the central government.

The government will maintain the continuity and stability of the macro-control policy to consolidate the development achievements made in the macro-control move, said Cao.

In the first six months of 2005, the industrial added value grew by 16.4 percent, dropping 1.3 percent from the over-growth a year ago but still remains at a high level.

Industrial enterprises realized profits of 626.6 billion yuan (77 billion US dollars), growing 19.1 percent over the same period of last year despite last year's high year-on-year growth rate of 41.6 percent.

The price of capital goods remained at a slower rising tread in the first half of this year as the year-on-year growth rate reached 5.6 percent.

Cao said that the tension between demand and supply of coal, electricity, petroleum and transportation was much relieved in the first six months, but did not get a fundamental solution.

Despite the electricity output in the first six months which 13.2 percent more than a year ago, electricity-use restricting load-shedding appeared in 18 provincial power grids.

The safety production situation in the coal industry is still severe and there is larger pressure for stable supply. The railway transportation capacity is still overloaded and petroleum refineries have been in long-time full-loaded operation, said Cao.

However, the industrial structural adjustment has seen progress as the over-growth trend of steel, cement and electrolytic aluminum has been put under effective control.

Investment in steel and building materials from January to June grew by 18.6 percent and 13 percent respectively, 32.9 and 40.8 percentage points lower than the growth rates a year ago.

Investment in the aluminum refining industry is 2.5 percent down from a year ago when the growth rate was 38 percent.

However, some industries saw supply over demand and falling profits resulted from over-expansion of output.

In the first five months, nearly 1.2 million-ton electrolytic aluminum production output was left unused with 39 of 125 enterprises stopping production and 55 reporting net losses. The profits of the cement industry dropped by 77 percent in the first half of this year.

Source: Xinhua