China Railway profits rise in infrastructure boom

China Railway Group Limited, one of the country's leading infrastructure builders, has posted a net profit increase of 16.42 percent from the same period last year in the first half of 2014.
With a net profit of 4.06 billion yuan (660.9 million U.S. dollars), the company registered a business revenue of 276.22 billion yuan in the first six months, according to a statement it filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Sunday.
The revenue was a 11.93-percent increase from the same period last year, said China Railway.
It attributed the good performance to the government's renewed focus on infrastructure building including railway construction, as part of efforts to bolster the economy, in the context of lukewarm economic growth.
The central government has increased its target for railway investment in 2014 from the original 630 billion yuan to the current more than 800 billion yuan, and increased the target of newly started railway projects from 44 to 64, according to the statement.
In the first six months, China Railway signed new infrastructure construction contracts worth 331.38 billion yuan, up 14.7 percent year on year.
In the second half of this year, the company said it will grasp the "historic opportunity" created by "significant increase in railway investment and accelerated advance in urban mass transit systems and housing building and the urbanization process as a whole."