China’s industrial profits up 19.6 per cent in July

Profits of China’s major industrial firms in July totaled 589.5 billion yuan (about 85.56 billion U.S. dollars), increasing by 19.6 per cent year on year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Thursday.

The NBS senior statistician, Zhu Hong, said that the growth widened by 8.1 percentage points from that in June.

He said that with the implementation of policies and measures to coordinate epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development, the industrial sector continues to improve and firms’ profits continue to see rapid recovery growth.

Hong said that in the first seven months of the year, the profits of major industrial firms declined 8.1 per cent to 3.1 trillion yuan, narrowing 4.7 percentage points from that in the first six months.

The NBS report shows that, specifically, profits of state-owned industrial firms dropped 23.5 per cent from one year earlier to 783.81 billion yuan, while those of private ones shrank 5.3 per cent year on year to 888.34 billion yuan.

During the period, profits of the mining industry slumped to 41.6 per cent and manufacturing industry profits decreased by 4.5 per cent.

According to the NBS, profits in 12 of the 41 surveyed industrial sectors rose compared with one year earlier, while 29 sectors saw their profits fall.

Major industrial companies refer to those with an annual business turnover of at least 20 million yuan.