CHINA National Aviation Fuel Group on Saturday launched the country’s first aviation fuel consumption index aimed at providing a fresh gauge for the regional and national economic health of the world’s second-largest economy.

After stellar growth for decades, China, the world’s second largest consumer after the United States, is seeing its aviation fuel demand growth slipping in the last few years as the economy expands less rapidly and more people travel by high speed rail.

“The aviation fuel index will become a good reflection of the consumption trend and a precursor of major events like an economic crisis,” CNAF, the country’s distributor of jet fuel, said in a release.

China is estimated to consume a total of 35 million tons of jet fuel this year, Gong Feng, vice president of CNAF, told a seminar.

That’s about 7 percent higher than last year, but down from 9-percent growth the previous year, said another executive.

Wu Xiaohua, deputy director at the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research, told the same seminar that China’s jet fuel consumption expanded 5.8 percent in September from a year earlier, recording a year-on-year decline in growth for seven months in a row.

At 5.8 percent, it represents the slowest growth since January 2015, Wu said.(SD-Agencies)