BEIJING ?- China's electricity consumption, a key barometer of economic activity, edged down 0.2 percent to 456.3 billion kilowatt hours (kwh) in September, official data showed Monday.

In the first three quarters, power use rose 0.8 percent from a year earlier to 4.13 trillion kWh, according to the data released by the National Energy Administration (NEA).

The figures came as the country's GDP grew by 6.9 percent year on year in the third quarter, the slowest quarterly growth since the second quarter of 2009.

Electricity used by service sectors rose 7.3 percent in the first nine months, that for the agricultural sector was up by 2.7 percent, while that for the industrial sector dropped 1 percent from a year earlier, the NEA said.

The different rates reflected positive changes in China's economic structure, as the service sector is taking an increasingly larger share than the power-consuming industrial sector.

In the first three quarters, the service sector took up 51.4 percent of China's GDP, compared with a 40.6 percent share of the industrial sector, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Enditem