China’s industrial profits improve in January-July

Chinese industrial businesses saw faster growth in profits in the first seven months of this year thanks to lower costs and the country’s growth-stabilizing measures, official data showed on Thursday.
Total profits of industrial companies rose 11.7 percent year on year to reach 3.34 trillion yuan ($542 billion) during the January-July period, accelerating 0.3% points from the first half of the year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.
Core business of those industrial companies contributed to about 93.3% of total profits, or 3.13 trillion, according to China’s News (Xinhua).
In July alone, industrial companies reaped combined profits of 482.33 billion yuan, which was 13.5% more than a year ago. But the July growth was 4.4% lower than that in June, indicating that the momentum has yet to be consolidated.
He Ping, an NBS statistician, said measures adopted by the government to stabilize economic growth have helped industrial companies keep steady growth in their sales revenues.
Price declines in raw materials also improved the profitability of downstream industries, He said.
In the January-July period, the industrial firms’ profit margin of core business stood at 5.54%, down from 5.57% in the January-June period.
The NBS data showed that about four-fifths of the profits came from the manufacturing sector, which posted an annualized increase of 15.6% with a combined profit of 2.69 trillion yuan.
The mining sector, however, saw its total profits fall by 13.2% year on year in the first seven months, narrowing from a decline of 14.6% in the January-June period.
Foreign-funded enterprises and companies with funds from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan posted the strongest growth in profits during the first seven months, with an annual increase of 16.1%, compared with 15.3% in the first half of the year.
In contrast, profits by state-owned and state-holding industrial enterprises expanded only 6.3% to 869.13 billion yuan, marking slower growth compared to their private or joint-stock peers.