The industrial output of China's major enterprises grew 15.7 percent year-on-year in April, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Wednesday.

The figure represents a drop of 2.1 percentage points over the previous month, or a drop of 1.7 percentage points over the same month of last year the bureau said.

Major enterprises are those with an annual sales volume of at least five million yuan.

An analyst with the NBS said the Tomb-Sweeping Day, which fell on April 4, was for the first time marked by a public holiday when a large number of industrial enterprises stopped production activities. That was one of the reasons why the industrial production cooled down in the past month.

The sales ratio of the enterprises stood at 97.8 percent, 0.5 percentage points lower than the same period of last year.

Delivered exports totaled 659.5 billion yuan (US$94.2 billion) in value, up 15.6 percent.

Two-digit growth in the industrial output was registered in the textile, nonmetal minerals products, ferrous metals smelting and pressing, telecommunications devices, computer and other electronic devices, and chemical materials and related processing industries.

The output of coal rose 13.9 percent year on year, crude oil, 0.5 percent, electricity, 12.8 percent, and rolled steel, 10.2 percent.

Production of sedans reached 520,000 units in April, an increase of 26.3 percent from a year earlier, the bureau said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 14, 2008)