China industrial output may be faster in Q4 vs Q3: Ministry

China's industrial output growth may be faster in the final three months of 2012 compared to the third quarter, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on Thursday.

Zhu Hongren, the spokesman and chief engineer of the Ministry, made the comment at a news conference but gave no detailed forecast of the scale of the improvement.

China's industrial output in September grew 9.2 percent, picking up from a rise of 8.9 percent in August, but despite signs of a gentle improvement in the factory sector, annual industrial output growth of 10 percent in the first nine months of 2012 is still below the Ministry's 11 percent target.

China's overall economic growth accelerated to 2.2 percent quarter-on-quarter in Q3 from an upwardly revised 2.0 percent rate in Q2, data showed last week, reinforcing views of analysts that a recovery is beginning to take hold even while annual growth heads for its slowest year since 1999.

(Reporting by Aileen Wang and Nick Edwards; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)