China's March coal imports nearly doubled from a year ago, mainly due to rising electricity consumption, higher domestic coal prices--which made imports more attractive--as well as a buying spree by coal suppliers looking to stock up for peak power demand in summer.
China's March coal imports nearly doubled from a year ago, mainly due to
rising electricity consumption, higher domestic coal prices--which made imports
more attractive--as well as a buying spree by coal suppliers looking to stock
up for peak power demand in summer.
March imports reached 17.08 million metric tons, up 93% from a year ago, final
data issued by the General Administration of Customs showed Monday.
Power consumption in March rose 7% to 416 billion kilowatt-hours, the National
Energy Administration said earlier.
January-March consumption rose 6.8% to 1.1655 trillion kilowatt-hours, while
9.24 gigawatts of new generation capacity was added.
Indonesia
was
still the top supplier to
China
, with
shipments nearly doubling to 5.11 million tons in March.
Australia
and
South
Africa
made significant strides,
with March exports to
China
rising 408% to 3.63 million tons and 338% to 1.36 million tons respectively.
"Global coal prices have been falling while local prices have been rising
since mid-March," Chem99 coal analyst Liu Shanshan said. Chem99 is an
energy consultancy company based in
Shandong
.
China
's
benchmark thermal coal prices averaged CNY785/ton in the April 11-17 period,
rising 0.4% from a week earlier, a state-backed coal price index showed.
The price has been gaining for five weeks in a row tracking high demand from
the power sector, as close to 70% of the country's power generations is
coal-fired.
"The April-May period is usually the peak coal-buying season as coal
suppliers want to stockpile to get through summer," when power demand
surges, Liu said.
China Electricity Council said in a research report Monday that the country
will face a shortage of 30,000-40,000 megawatts this summer, about the same as
last year.
Domestic coal supply hasn't been able to catch up with rising demand.
Xinhua reported earlier that first-quarter output was 838 million tons, up
5.8%.
China
's
annual consumption is 3.7 billion tons a year, according to a researcher from
the
Chinese
Academy
of
Sciences.
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