Industrial profit up 21.6% in first eight months, says NBS

China’s major industrial firms posted steady profit growth in the first eight months of the year, official data showed Wednesday.

From January to August, industrial companies with annual revenue of over 20 million yuan ($3 million) reported total profits of more than 4.92 trillion yuan, 21.6 percent more than in the same period of 2016, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The growth rate was 0.4 percentage points faster than the 21.2 percent rise seen in January to July.

In August, profits at major industrial firms rose 24 percent yearon-year to 671 billion yuan, and the growth rate was 7.5 percentage points faster than the 16.5 percent increase in July. This was also the highest growth rate since 2013, according to news site guancha.cn.

NBS statistician He Ping attributed the accelerated industrial growth in profit to lower costs and rising prices in August, along with enforcement of supply-side structural reform, and improvements in efficiency at many enterprises.

The rise in prices allowed enterprises’ profits to rise by about 127.3 billion yuan in August, or 40.6 billion yuan more than July, accounting for 31.2 percent of the new profits, He estimated.

From January to August, profits in the equipment manufacturing sector surged 18.6 percent year-on-year to over 4.32 trillion yuan, said the NBS.

Business insiders believe that the profit growth rate will stay around the level of 20 percent in the fourth quarter, said media reports.