Industrial profits see rapid growth in first 10 months

China’s major industrial firms maintained rapid profit growth in the first 10 months of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday.

Industrial companies with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan ($3.02 million) reported profits of 6.24 trillion yuan in the first 10 months, a 23.3 percent increase from one year earlier, the NBS said in a statement.

In October, industrial profit increased by 25.1 percent over the same period of 2016. Even though the growth rate slowed by 2.6 percentage points from September, the monthly growth rate remains high this year, the statement said.

The growth in corporate efficiency is contributing to the rise in profits of industrial enterprises, according to NBS statistician He Ping.

About 51.2 percent of the increase in profits in October was generated from coal mining, iron and steel smelting and processing, chemicals, and oil and natural gas extraction, He said.

The corporate leverage rate also decreased and business risk continued to decline, the statement said. By the end of October, industrial enterprises’ debt-asset ratio was 55.7 percent, down by 0.5 percentage points from a year ago.

High-tech manufacturing and strategic emerging industries have maintained their rapid growth. From January to October, high-tech manufacturing industry revenue increased by 13.6 percent year-on-year.