China's safety record has improved in the first nine months of 2010 with fewer accidents and deaths compared with one year ago, Luo Lin, director of the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS), said Wednesday.

From January to September this year, China reported 16,091 fewer accidents, or a decline of 5.8 percent over the previous year, while deaths caused by accidents were down by 5,869 in the same period, Luo said during a a national video conference regarding the country's work safety record.

While Luo did not provide the actual figures of accidents or deaths caused during this period, he said: "Though we have made new progress in work safety, the total number of accidents is still too high and the accidents with heavy casualties and caused by illegal production activities were rising dramatically."

According to SAWS, China's work safety death ratio per 100 million yuan (US$14.9 million) of gross domestic product (GDP) was down 18.6 percent year on year to 0.21 during the January-September period. In other words, every 10 billion yuan of China's GDP will cause 21 deaths in the process of production.

In addition, the death ratio per million tonne of coal output dropped 13.3 percent to 0.78 in the same period.

According to the last figures released by SAWS in July, workplace accidents had killed 33,876 people in the first half of this year.

(Xinhua News Agency October 14, 2010)