Beijing, Apr 14 (IANS): China's power consumption rose 7 percent year-on-year to 416 billion kilowatt hours in March, increasing 0.3 percentage points from the January-February period, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said Saturday.

For the first quarter of this year, electricity consumption added only 6.8 percent from a year ago to 1.1655 trillion kilowatt hours (KWH), as shortened working days in January due to the Chinese lunar New Year holidays cut industrial demand of energy, according to the NEA.

Compared with a year ago, the quarterly energy use growth was down 5.9 percentage points amid an economic slowdown, reported Xinhua.

China's gross domestic product growth slowed to 8.1 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, marking the slowest quarterly expansion since the second quarter of 2009, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday.

From January to March, electricity consumption by primary industries dipped 3 percent year-on-year to 19 billion KWH, power used by secondary industries expanded by 4.5 percent to 838.5 billion KWH, while the tertiary industries consumed 139.8 billion kWh of electricity, up 13 percent year-on-year.

Also, residential electricity consumption increased 15.5 percent from a year earlier to 168.3 billion KWH.