China: Industrial firms' profits up 3.5% y-o-y in Jan-Apr

China's sizable industrial firms saw their gross profits gain 3.5% on year over January-April, or down by 5 percentage points from the first quarter this year, according to the latest release by the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on May 27.

"Sporadic COVID-19 outbreaks in some regions of China caused a significant impact on production and operations of enterprises in April," Zhu Hong, NBS's senior statistician, was quoted analysing the data.

In the first four months of this year, Chinese sizable industrial firms posted gross profits at Yuan 2.66 trillion ($394.2 billion), and with the total, those for April declined 8.6% on year to reach Yuan 702.7 billion, Mysteel Global calculated based on the NBS data.

Over January-April, among the country's 41 industrial sectors, 20 saw their profits decrease on year while 19 reported on-year rises, the NBS data showed.

"Some regions and sectors had been greatly affected by the pandemic," according to Zhu, as those industrial firms based in East and Northeast China saw their profits drop 16.7% and 8.1% respectively on year over January-April, and China's auto manufacturing sector for example, saw its profits slump by 33.4% on year to Yuan 118.3 billion during the same period.

In stark contrast, China's mining sector maintained the high growth in profits over January-April, as the latest statistics showed that the sector's total value soared 145.9% on year to Yuan 543.6 billion.

As for the country's non-ferrous and ferrous sectors, non-ferrous smelters and fabricators recorded a 40.3% on-year rise in their profits over January-April, totalling Yuan 115.8 billion, and the upstream mining and processing sector also saw its profits surge 62.9% on year to Yuan 22.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Chinese steelmakers and processers recorded a 55.7% on-year decline in their profits to Yuan 66 billion over the same period, but the mining sector posted a 9.5% on-year gain to Yuan 27.6 billion, according to NBS.

"With the overall pandemic situation across the country being gradually brought under control, Chinese enterprises have been able to resume operation and production in an orderly manner. And the profitability of domestic industrial enterprises will gradually recover, as more policies reducing burden on market players continue to take effect," Zhu noted.

Written by Rong Zhang, zhangronga@mysteel.com

Note: This article has been published in accordance with an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.