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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