China has taken a raft of measures to ensure the accuracy and objectivity of energy conservation data, a senior statistics official said Thursday.

This was believed to go some way to tackling suspicion from both home and abroad over the accuracy of China's official statistic figures.

A total of 21 out of the nation's 31 provincial-level statistics bureaus have set up energy and resources statistics departments, Xu Xianchun, deputy director of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), told a press conference in Beijing.

"(We) have boosted statistics staff as well as funds, and it provides a basic guarantee for (energy saving) data accuracy improvements," said Xu.

The NBS, in cooperation with the International Energy Agency, has trained statistic officials in the provincial-level bureaus and is planning to train more in more than 300 Chinese cities. It has also trained statisticians in 15,000 major energy-consuming companies, he said.

Xu added the NBS has devised a standard regulation to calculate energy consumption and strengthened monitoring and inspections to ensure data accuracy.

China has vowed to cut energy consumption used to generate per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 20 percent over the 2005 level between by 2010.

Its energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped three percent year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2007, according to Xie Zhenhua, deputy chief of the National Development and Reform Commission.

(Xinhua News Agency November 29, 2007)