BEIJING - A new, online data reporting system launched by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is up and running, a top official said on Monday.

About 700,000 companies in the industrial, retail, and real estate sectors are required to submit their data, which will be used to ensure the accuracy of economic indicators. About 10 percent of these companies have already uploaded their information to the national data center.

"Thousands of statisticians have been sent into companies to supervise and support the reporting work and make sure that the data is accurate," Ma Jiantang, the NBS chief, said on Monday.

In Guangdong province, 2.1 percent of 66,000 companies required to report have submitted their data. In Shandong province, more than 2,000 businesses have uploaded their statistics by Monday morning.

The new system will be used to calculate national figures for industrial output and companies' profit for the first two months of this year, which are scheduled to be released on March 9.