Industrial Profits Down 17% in First Seven Months

飞雪寒冰

Industrial profits in 22 major regions fell 17.3 percent year-on-year to 1.1 trillion yuan in the first seven months, the National Bureau of Statistics said in an Aug. 28 statement on its Web site.

The rate of decline narrowed 3.8 percentage points from that in the first six months of the year, the NBS said.

Zhu Jianfang, chief economist at CITIC Securities Co, said he expects industrial profits to rebound significantly in the fourth quarter, raising the full-year profit to the same level as that in 2008.

Zhu added that profit growth is projected at 20-30 percent in 2010, Zhu said.

Among the 39 major industries covered by the survey, the rubber industry posted a top growth of 34.3 percent in the first seven months, up 19.8 percentage points from the January-June period.

Minsheng Securities analyst Wang Fenghua said rubber profits were boosted by higher demand from the auto industry, which saw sales rise 23.4 percent year-on-year to 7.18 million units in the first seven months.

飞雪寒冰

Profit booked by the oil exploration industry totalled 81.3 billion yuan in the first seven months, down 71 percent year-on-year while profit in the non-ferrous metals smelting and extraction sector hit 17.8 billion yuan in the first seven months, down 63.9 percent year-on-year.

Steel industry profit, meanwhile, was down 77.3 percent from a year earlier to 29.8 billion yuan during the seven months, while the electronics industry posted profits of 27.7 billion yuan, down 43.5 percent.

The 22 Chinese regions account for 78.6 percent of total profits booked by China's industrial firms, according to the statistics bureau.