North China's Shanxi Province, the country's major coal production base, turned out 543 million tons of raw coal in 2005, according to the provincial administration of coal industry.

That's a 10 percent growth over the previous year, said an official with the administration.

He said nearly 80 percent of the output has been sold to areas outside Shanxi.

According to the official, state-owned key coal enterprises yielded more than 265 million tons of raw coal, making up about half of the province's total. Township mines saw their output growth slow down to less than 5 percent as the government intensified measures to enhance coal mining safety and closed unqualified mines.

The province exported 34.77 million tons of coal last year, a decrease of more than 20 percent due to fluctuations of the international and domestic markets and China's export policy.

Shanxi suffered 179 fatal coal mine accidents in 2005, which killed 468 miners. The death rate per million ton of coal production stood at 0.766, far below the national average, said the official.

Source: Xinhua