China's top statistician Li Deshui addresses the press conference at the Information Office of the State Council in Beijing, Dec. 20, 2005. (Photo: Xinhua)

China on Tuesday revised its GDP (gross domestic product) for 2004 to 15.9878 trillion yuan (about 2 trillion U.S. dollars), up 2.3 trillion yuan, or 16.8 percent from the preliminary figures.

The country's top statistician Li Deshui made the announcement at a press conference of the Information Office of the State Council, citing the result of a national economic survey.

The country has overtaken Italy as the world's 6th biggest economy.

The value-added of the tertiary industry was 6.5018 trillion yuan, 2.1297 trillion more than the annual preliminary estimation announced earlier this year. And the industry's share in the GDP rose from the earlier estimated 31.9 percent to 40.7 percent, an increase of 8.8 percentage points.

The increase of service sector output accounted for the largest part, or 93 percent, of that of the GDP.

Li said China had long been using the Material Product System (MPS) which was developed under the centrally-planned economic system in its national account statistics until the 1980s, resulting in "very weak" statistics for the service sector.

The scope of tertiary industry is turning wide and complex with a large number of units, which have no good means for accounting and statistics, he said.

Meanwhile, along with the economic reform, China has seen a diversified economic development in terms of ownership, and in particular, a dynamic development of private and individual-run service activities.

"It is very difficult to conduct statistical surveys as they are very scattered with frequent changes, resulting in a certain degree of under-coverage," said Li.

While many new services are mushrooming, data on their activities are often underestimated, he acknowledged.

Li added that some of the services affiliated to manufacturing or construction enterprises are estimated but classified into the secondary industry, while more others are neglected.

The value-added of the secondary industry was 7.3904 trillion yuan in 2004, 151.7 billion more than the original data, while the industry's share in the GDP shrank from the preliminarily estimated 52.9 percent to 46.2 percent, a drop of 6.7 percentage points.

"Through the survey, we are able to remove the 'water' from the statistics of the manufacturing sector, in particular, from small-sized enterprises," Li said.

Analysts say some small firms, including township enterprises in the rural areas, have been exaggerating their output figures to help local governments and officials showcase their "political achievements" and seek promotion.

Li said the share of the primary industry was still based on the figure from the annual preliminary estimation, as the industry was not covered in the survey.

The value-added of the primary industry was 2.0956 trillion yuan, and the industry's share in the GDP was 13.1 percent, 2.1 percentage points lower than the preliminary figures.

Result from the latest survey will not affect the nation's macro-economic policy, Li said. "The changes in the figures do not mean the traditional statistics have misled China's policy-making."

The survey's leading group was set up under the State Council, China's cabinet, and headed by Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan, with governments at all levels and concerned departments participating in the event.

More than 3 million enumerators and supervisors were recruited, and another 10 million statistician and accountants from government agencies, enterprises and institutions were mobilized to participate in the survey, according to Li.

More than 30 million questionnaires were collected in the survey with more than 1.06 billion records of firsthand raw data, Li said, adding that a sample survey showed that the comprehensive reporting error was only 4.9 per thousand, within the 1-percent target.

Source: Xinhua