Profits earned by China's industrial firms grew 14.7 percent in the first nine months of 2018, down 1.5 percentage points from the January-August period, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Saturday.
Reduced business costs and a decrease in asset-liability ratio helped industrial profits maintain rapid growth, according to He Ping, an NBS official.
For September alone, combined profits of industrial firms with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan (about 2.88 million US dollars) reached 545.5 billion yuan, up 4.1 percent on an annual basis. The growth pace, however, slowed from 9.2 percent registered in August.
The slowdown in September is attributed to a pullback in the growth of industrial production and product prices as well as a high comparative base from last year, said He.
Industries with fat profits
New profits were mainly from steel, building materials, petroleum, and chemical industries.
In the first three quarters of this year, the profits of steel, building materials, petroleum processing and chemical industries increased by 71.1 percent, 44.9 percent, 30.8 percent and 24.5 percent respectively.
The profits of the petroleum exploitation industry, in particular, grew four folds during the period.
