According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Monday, the car output in China for the period from January to May was 724,200, more than double that of the same period last year.

NBS official Jiang Yuan has said that the industry will probably not be able to sustain such a high growth rate in the latter half of the year. The official added that the surplus of cars would pull prices down.

Meanwhile, NBS figures show that a slump in output of passenger and cargo vehicles led to a 0.3 percent drop in the total output of automobiles, the first year-on-year drop in several years.

The output of cargo vehicles plummeted 40 percent year-on-year in May, while that of passenger vehicles slid 26 percent.

According to the NBS, in May, Beijing's largest automobile market saw a 25-percent drop in sales from the previous month, the lowest sales figures in the past few years.

Statistics show that, due to the increased production of the past few months, end of May stockpiles had risen 30 percent over the beginning of the year. For each of the past two months, supply exceeded demand by an average of 10,000 cars.

(China Daily June 17, 2003)