China has made an upward revision to its first-quarter economic growth rate result, to a rise of 9.8 percent year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported on Monday. The original figure was 9.7 percent.

This is the first time China has made such a revision, the NBS said.

According to the revision, China's gross domestic product in the first quarter grew 9.8 percent over the same period in 2003, to 2.7 trillion yuan (US$328 billion). The figure is 2.2 billion yuan (US$266 million) greater, or 0.1 percentage point higher, than the previously reported figure.

The NBS experts explained that readjustment in transportation, warehousing, posts, communications, and other service industries raised the tertiary industry growth rate by 0.3 percentage point, or 2.2 billion yuan, in the first three months.

The revised statistics show that the added value of the tertiary industry reached 946.5 billion yuan (US$114.3 billion) in the first quarter, up 8 percent year-on-year. There were no changes in other industries.

In 2003, China's economy grew 9.1 percent year-on-year.

The NBS published a regulation on the GDP accounting and data release system last year to make its GDP figures more objective and accurate and to increase the figures' transparency and credibility. The regulation broke the quarterly GDP accounting into three steps: preliminary accounting, preliminary check and final check.

(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2004)