China industrial firms' profits down 2% y-o-y during Jan-Sept

Over January-September, China's sizable industrial firms saw their gross profits slip by 2.3% on year to Yuan 6.24 trillion ($871 billion) in total, according to the latest data released by the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday morning.

For September alone, a narrower on-year decline was seen in these industrial enterprises' profits - down by 2.7% on year to reach Yuan 718.8 billion, as against the 7% fall in the previous month, Mysteel Global calculated based on the NBS data.

"During September, the recovery of China's industrial economy accelerated, and profits of enterprises improved gradually, as a batch of policies to stabilize the national economy and subsequent measures took effect," Zhu Hong, NBS' senior statistician, was quoted as commenting.

In September, 23 of the 41 industrial sectors under NBS's tracking either saw their profits grow on year or posted smaller on-year declines, among which 14 enjoyed double-digit gains in their profits, according to Zhu.

Over the first nine months of this year, China's coal mining and washing sector - among all the 41 industrial sectors - maintained its top position in terms of profitability, with gross profits amounting to Yuan 784.6 billion, or soaring 88% on year. And the chemical sector ranked second again in total profits, with the value inching up by 1.6% on year to Yuan 590.9 billion, according to the NBS data.

Meanwhile, China's ferrous mining and processing sector posted an on-year decline of 28.9% to Yuan 52.3 billion over January-September. Significantly, the steelmaking and processing sector suffered the largest on-year fall among all the 41 sectors, plunging 91.4% to Yuan 31.3 billion.

As for the country's non-ferrous sector, smelting and processing firms also posted a 14.4% on-year fall in profits to Yuan 192 billion, while the upstream mining and processing sector gained 44.1% on year to Yuan 54.3 billion, the NBS data showed.

Written by Rong Zhang, zhangronga@mysteel.com

This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.