THE country produced 451.1 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power in March, down 3.7 percent compared to the previous year, official data showed yesterday, a further sign that an economic slowdown is hurting energy-consuming industries.

    Excluding holiday months, the year-on-year decline in power output is the biggest since late 2008, when China’s economy was hit by the global financial crisis.

    “The government’s decision to remove overcapacity from some industrial sectors has shown some effects on power output, but more importantly, electricity demand was capped by sluggish demand,” said Zhou Hao, economist at ANZ Bank in Shanghai.

    According to the National Bureau of Statistics, output from China’s power stations over the first quarter of the year reached 1.31 trillion kWh, down 0.1 percent from the same period of 2014.(SD-Agencies)