Top coal producer and consumer China cut coal output targets at the top three producing regions by as much as 7 percent from a year ago to ease a supply glut caused by a slowdown in economic growth, which has also weakened global prices.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), a top government economic planning agency, set China's total coal output for 2012 at 3.65 billion tonnes, an increase of just 3.7 percent from year ago and a deceleration from the 8.6 percent growth of last year and 9 percent the year before, according to a statement seen by Reuters recently.

Softening demand from China, where the economy is growing at its slowest pace in more than three years, has dragged prices of coal, iron ore and other commodities to multi-year lows, hurting the profits of global miners such as BHP Billiton and Vale SA.

Coal accounts for about 80 percent of the fuel China uses to generate electricity, but the waning growth has reduced demand for power from manufacturers and cut the increase in total electricity generation to around 2 percent so far this year, compared to 12 percent for the whole of 2011.

The NDRC said production targets for the regions of Inner Mongolia and Shanxi were reduced by around seven percent compared to last year's output and Shaanxi region's output was lowered by around one percent. All targets are also below earlier forecasts by the local governments: Inner Mongolia, China's top coal producing province, was lowered to 920 million tonnes from an estimate of more than one billion tonnes and Shanxi's targeted output was cut to 810 million tonnes from a previous forecast of around 900 million tonnes.