Profits of China’s industrial firms in April rose at their fastest pace in six months as the factories benefited from higher prices and strong demand, data from the NBS has showed.
Profits in April rose 21.9 per cent year-on-year to 576 billion yuan ($90.14 billion), the quickest since October, bringing gains for the first four months of 2018 to 15 per cent, reports Reuters.
The data of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) suggests China’s industrial sector is still seeing solid growth momentum despite curbs on pollution and rocky trade relations with the United States.
Last month’s rebound was helped by lower comparison figures for April 2017, higher factory prices and stronger demand, He Ping, head of NBS’ industrial division, said in a statement.
It was a significant improvement over March’s 3.1 per cent growth that was the slowest in over a year and which government officials had blamed on the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday.
The profit growth for the industrial firms has softened from last year’s strong pace as factory gate price gains weaken. In the first four months of 2017, profits rose 24.4 per cent.
April’s rebound was led by the steel, chemicals and automobile industries, said He, as profits for iron and steel processing firms rose 260 per cent in April.
No industrial sectors recorded year-on-year losses over January to April, the data showed.
But earnings in the computer and telecommunications sector fell 5.3 per cent over the four months, though that was a slight improvement from an 11 per cent decline in the first quarter.
Liabilities of industrial firms rose 6.1 per cent year-on-year as of end-April, according to the statistics bureau.
Profits at China’s state-owned firms rose 26.2 percent to 627 billion yuan for Jan-April, compared with a 23.1 per cent rise in the first quarter.
The data includes companies with annual revenues of more than 20 million yuan ($3.13 million) from their main operations.