China generated 274.76 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in April, down 3.55 percent from a year earlier, according to statistics released Tuesday by the State Grid Corporation of China.

Official figure for April's power generation is expected to be released by the China Electricity Council later this month.

As a major barometer of economic performance, the combined power generation in January and February was 488.3 billion kilowatt hours, down 3.7 percent year on year. The March figure fell 0.71 percent to 286.73 billion kilowatt hours.

China has seen year-on-year declines in power generation since October last year, when a four percent fall was recorded, as the global economic downturn started to hurt the economy.

The decline grew to 9.6 percent in November and 7.9 percent in December.

Wang Yonggan, secretary-general of the China Electricity Council, said the first and the second quarters would be the toughest period when power generation would continue to fall. He expected an increase in the fourth quarter.

The official figure for April was likely to slide about four percent year on year, indicating an economic recovery was still some way off, the China Daily newspaper cited a source familiar with the matter as saying.

Xue Jing, director of the statistics and information department under the China Electricity Council, told the paper that the estimated figure would signal a larger decline than that in March, which saw a 0.7 percent drop.

(Xinhua News Agency May 6, 2009)