China's coal production drops 10.7% in January-October

Coal production in China fell 10.7 percent year on year to 2.74 billion tons in the first ten months of this year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. In October, coal production fell 12 percent year on year to 280 million tonnes.

Coal imports increased 55.3 percent year on year to 21.58 million tons in October alone. Within ten months, demand for coal imports increased by 18.5 percent from a year earlier to 200 million tons, the bureau said.

China is the world's largest consumer of coal. The industry has long suffered from overcapacity and has felt in decline over the past two years as the economy cools and demand has fallen.

China is cutting capacity of its coal industry and plans to cut it by 1.5 billion tonnes over the next few years, as reducing excess capacity is one of the country's major structural reform challenges. In September, more than 80 percent of the target reduction of 250 million tons in the country for the year was already fulfilled, according to official data.