Beijing: Chinese industrial businesses saw their profits rise by 11.4 percent year on year in the first half of this year, official data showed yesterday.
Total profits of industrial companies with annual business revenue of more than 20m yuan ($3.2m) reached 2.86 trillion yuan, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement.
The profits growth was markedly up from the less than 10 percent increase recorded in the first five months. The faster-than-expected growth pace was due to strong growth in June, when industrial firms raked in 588bn yuan in profits, up surprisingly by 17.9 percent from a year ago, Xinhua news agency reported.
He Ping, statistician under the NBS, attributed the increase to rising sales and dropping costs of industrial firms in June and admitted that the low base in the same period last year also contributed to the high growth.
Profits of foreign-funded enterprises and companies with funds from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan rose the most by 15.3 percent year on year to 691.76bn yuan. State-owned and state-holding industrial enterprises amounted to 761.35bn yuan in profits, up 5.6 percent.
QNA
