CHINA will not publish quarter-on-quarter gross domestic product data until 2011, a year later than scheduled, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.

The bureau has taken note of the demand from researchers and economists for official estimates of sequential growth to help judge the momentum of the world's second-largest economy, said Ma Jiantang, its head.

In a statement on the its website, Ma said the bureau has begun calculating quarter-on-quarter and month-on-month changes in seven key economic indicators for internal use.

But it needed time to assess the accuracy of the figures before publishing them, which it would do next year. The agency had originally intended to start reporting quarterly growth rates this year.

Unlike most advanced economies, China reports only year-on-year GDP growth rates. The bureau usually publishes month-on-month changes in consumer and producer prices, but the figures are not seasonally adjusted, limiting their usefulness.

Ma said the bureau had conducted surveys to establish the jobless rate in 31 major cities but for internal use only.

China's official urban registered unemployment rate is compiled by the labor ministry. On this measure, the jobless rate was 4.2 percent at the end of June.