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Rail freight volume speeds up in July

China's rail freight volumes recorded faster growth in July, the national railway operator said on Wednesday. The railways carried 246 million metric tons of cargo last month, up 17 percent year-on-year, up from 15.5-percent growth in June, according to figures from the China Railway Corp. Freight on high-speed railways was up 70 percent year-on-year in July, the CRC said. In the first seven months of the year, rail freight volumes reached 1.7 billion tons, up 15.1 percent from a year earlier. In July, industrial output, fixed-asset investment and consumption all posted slower expansion than in June, but the use of electricity saw stronger growth. China posted GDP growth of 6.9 percent in Q2, flat with the previous quarter, but above the government's annual growth target of 6.5 percent.