BEIJING - China's central government has moved to stop its wayward provinces from rigging their economic growth numbers, a widespread problem that has outraged and embarrassed Beijing, according to the state press.

Survey teams will report directly to the National Bureau of Statistics, rather than provincial governments, which often alter their numbers to make it appear that Beijing's economic targets have been met, Xinhua news agency said.

"It often happens that local governments interfere with the accounting to make them look better than they are," Xinhua quouted Cai Zhizhou, an expert in the field at Beijing University, as saying.

The head of the statistics bureau, Xie Fuzhan, reportedly told a conference on Thursday that rural governments had provided a "wealth of falsified information" to Beijing recently as economic numbers were gathered.

"Some census takers did not follow the collection procedures and fabricated figures to make sure official targets were reached," Xie said.

For years, economists and observers have held that China's statistics are incorrect and that the economy was expanding at a much faster pace than the official rates.

Largely to blame for the misreporting is a system that has made the pursuit of economic expansion and development the top criteria for provincial cadres' political advancement.

China's key economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, last year warned provinces to better toe the line on Beijing's economic directives.

It issued in August a damning report that showed the economies in three quarters of China's provinces expanded at 12 percent or more in the first six months of 2006, above the official national figure of 10.9 percent.

The report said the disparity meant that in the first six months of 2006, China's economy was likely an estimated 100 billion dollars bigger than the official 1.1 trillion dollar figure.

To better enforce the rules, at the end of 2006 the statistics bureau formed its own survey teams in China's 30 provinces.

"The NBS will improve unified accounting of added value in the agriculture and construction industries and speed up the local GDP (gross domestic product) accounting by central government," said Xie.