China's industrial output growth will pick up pace in the second half of this year and is expected to grow more than 10 percent then, as the government's economic stimulus continues to take effect, the country's industry watchdog said in a report Thursday.

The pace of the industrial output growth in the second quarter is expected to be quicker than that in the first quarter, as the slumping industrial production in the first four months has been reversed, the report said.

In order to maintain steady industrial production, the government must stimulate domestic demand, said the report, which was jointly released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

"In the coming months, the northern part of the country will enter a period when construction picks up as the weather would turn warm, which will spur domestic demand," said Jin Bei, director of Institute of Industrial Economics under CASS, one of the authors of the report.

"And the lower base in the second half of last year (when the output dropped dramatically) will make the growth this year (seem) quicker," Jin said.

China's industrial output rose 5.5 percent in the first four months of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics reported earlier.

(China Daily May 22, 2009)