Posted on 27 Apr 2023
Chinese sizable industrial firms' gross profits totaled Yuan 1.52 trillion ($218.9 billion) in the first quarter of this year, or having declined by 21.4% on year, according to the latest data released by the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on April 27.
As for March, these industrial firms' gross profits slid by 19.2% on year, but the pace slowed down by 3.7 percentage points from the prior two months, mainly driven by "better macroeconomic performance and a recovery in market demand", said Sun Xiao, NBS's statistician.
"The decline in industrial firms' profits remained large despite its slightly slowing pace, and many firms saw their profit losses persist high," Sun was quoted as saying. "But the on-year fall in prices among upstream sectors is conducive to improving the profitability of downstream sectors," the statistician added.
In the first three months, 28 of the 41 industrial sectors across China posted on-year falls in their profits, among which the coal mining and washing sector ranked the top with its gross profits totaling Yuan 225.1 billion, down 4.9% on year, according to NBS.
The electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing sector and the electric power and heat production and supply sector came next with separate profits of Yuan 112.3 billion and Yuan 109.9 billion, up by 27.1% and 47.9% respectively on year, the NBS data found.
Meanwhile, China's ferrous mining and processing sector saw its profits drop 46.9% on year to Yuan 9.5 billion during this year's first quarter. The downstream steelmaking and processing sector, however, suffered a profit loss of Yuan 4.8 billion, or having plunged by 1.1 times on year, according to the release.
As for the country's nonferrous sector, the smelting and processing firms also posted a 57.5% on-year fall in profits to Yuan 34.8 billion for Q1. In contrast, the upstream nonferrous mining and processing sector presented profits of Yuan 19.4 billion, up 13.8% on year.
Source:Mysteel Global
