CHINA will kick off a series of policies to encourage information technology consumption such as next-generation network, e-commerce, instant messaging and games to make it a new engine to fuel economic development, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said yesterday.

In the first five months, China's IT consumption reached 1.38 trillion yuan (US$219 billion), up 19.8 percent from a year ago. By 2015, the IT consumption will hit 2 trillion yuan with an annual growth rate of 25 percent, the ministry said.