China's investment in mining industry saw a 33.4 percent growth to 256.75 billion yuan in the first nine months of this year, according to a senior official of the Ministry of Land and Resources.

Vice Minister Wang Min told an international mining conference, which kicked off here on Tuesday, that China's mining industry witnessed a rapid growth in investment, exploration and production from January to September this year.

The investment in oil, metal and non-metal smelting and pressing sectors totaled 409.87 billion yuan, up 14 percent from the same period of last year.

According to the vice minister, in the nine-month period, China's raw coal output hit 1.478 billion tons, up 11.7 percent, and crude oil output grew 1.7 percent year on year to 138 million tons.

Meanwhile, the production of coke rose 16.7 percent to 200 million tons, that of iron ore, up 37.7 percent to 4 million tons, and cement output came to 870 million tons, up 20.7 percent.

The official also said that in 2005, China's total production value of mining industry reached 1.48 trillion yuan and the country's total ore output stood at around 7 billion tons, with the outputs of coal, steel, copper, aluminium and cement ranking the first in the world.

Last year, China discovered altogether 169 large and medium-sized ore mines, he disclosed.

Source: Xinhua