China's power generation is likely to have fallen 4 percent year on year in April, indicating an economic recovery is still some way off, Tuesday's China Daily reported.

The estimated figure would signal a larger decline than that in March, when power output fell 0.7 percent to 286.7 billion KWh, Xue Jing, director of the statistics and information department under the China Electricity Council told the paper.

Official figure for April is expected to come out later this month.

As an important barometer of the economy, the country's power generation is till fluctuating at the bottom level, according to Xue.

Data from State Grid Corp of China (SGCC), the country's main power transmission company, showed national power generation in terms of the daily average dropped by 3.9 percent from April 11 to 20, when compared with the same period last year.

The fall was larger than the 3.5 percent drop seen from the first ten days in April.

"Figures for the last 10 days of April are not optimistic, as there has been no big recovery in industrial power consumption, which accounts for a large part of the total power usage," said a source with SGCC.

Although the rate of decline in April may be faster than that in March, the big drop in power generation overall has been halted, said Chang Jianping, an official with the State Electricity Regulatory Commission.

"We expect the situation to get better after May," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 5, 2009)