A previous report for 2004 had calculated that environmental degradation that year cost 511.8 billion yuan ($67.7 billion) or 3.05 percent of gross domestic product -- a figure one SEPA official said at the time was "shocking".

That earlier report was issued in September last year with official fanfare and wide domestic media attention.

The report for 2005 shows "losses from pollution and reduction in the GDP indicator even higher than the 2004 report", the paper said, citing a weekend seminar on the study.

The report would also have computed economic losses from pollution for each province -- a sensitive step in a system where maintaining economic growth can be crucial to officials' promotion prospects.

Wang said that SEPA and the statistics agency had "major differences" over what the report should say and how it should be distributed.

The China Environment News, SEPA's official newspaper, argued earlier this month that the "green GDP" idea was essential to breaking officials' fixation on growth.

"We must use green GDP, this powerful restraining device, to further intervene and correct," the paper said.

But the head of China's statistics bureau, Xie Fuzhan, said on July 12 that the government had stopped using the term "green GDP" -- previously promoted to cover measures of growth that took into account environmental costs.

Xie said the term was not internationally accepted, but China would continue issuing statistics on energy efficiency, land use and emissions.

Some Chinese economists have also said that methods and data available for calculating economic losses from environmental exploitation were still too crude for open use.

Without the support of the statistics agency it would be impossible to continue research seeking to calculate the costs of environmental harm, Wang said.

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