Korea's industrial electricity sales grew slightly from a year earlier in the first three months of the year on a business recovery in the chip and oil refinery sectors, the government said Thursday.

The amount of electricity consumed by the country's industrial sector reached 69.36 billion kilowatt-hours in the January-March period, up 1.5 percent from the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

It marked a turnaround from a 1.2-percent on-year drop in the last quarter of last year and the highest gain since the fourth quarter of 2014.

Industrial electricity sales are often considered a barometer of industrial activity as companies use more power when business is good and cut back when demand is low.

The on-year increase came as the downbeat pace of the country's exports slowed over the three-month period on the back of rising shipments of chips and petroleum products.

Outbound shipments nosedived nearly 19 percent in January, but the rate of decline narrowed to 13.1 percent in February and 8.1 percent in March on rising demand for Korean mobile phones and chips.

"Power consumption in the semiconductor and oil refinery sectors pushed up the entire industrial electricity sales," the ministry said in a release.

Overall electricity sales in the January-March period gained 1.8 percent on-year to 130.47 billion kilowatt-hours as consumption by households and commercial buildings rose 2.2 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively. (Yonhap)