Posted on 28 Apr 2021
China’s sizable industrial firms posted a 137% on-year gain in their gross profits over January-March, which was also up 50.2% from Q1 2019, confirming their significant improvement in their financial performance, according to the release by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on April 27.
“In the first quarter, both industrial activities and economy had continued to recover, with enterprises achieving stability in both production and operations, and their profits had recovered at a faster pace and efficiency in operations had been enhanced consistently,” Zhu Hong, NBS’s senior statistician, was quoted analysing the Q1 data.
In the first three months, China’s sizable industrial firms posted a total gross profit at Yuan 1.83 trillion ($281.3 billion), and for March alone, their gross profit surged 92.3% on year to Yuan 711.2 billion, or 39% of the total, partially as bulk commodities prices surged in March, Mysteel Global noted.
During the first quarter, 39 of the 41 industrial sectors saw their profits gain by at least two digits on year, and 16 with profits doubling on year, according to the official statistics, and compared with the first quarter of 2019, 30 industrial sectors posted gains in gross profits, the NBS data showed.
Among all the profitmaking industrial sectors, petrochemical sector posted the largest gross profits at Yuan 169 billion in the first quarter, or up 343% on year, according to the official data.
China’s auto manufacturing saw its profits surge the most among all the sectors by nearly 8.5 times to Yuan 132.1 billion in the first quarter, which was probably due to the low base in Q1 2020 when many domestic automakers had been fully suspended or operating at low capacities, Mysteel Global understood from the market.
Demand for ferrous and nonferrous products has been robust amid the consistent recovery in the economic and industrial activities in China, though profits varied in the first quarter, with the former more in upstream, while the latter in downstream, products, Mysteel Global noted from the NBS data.
China’s ferrous mining and processing, for example, ranked the second in the growth of profits, up 780% on year to Yuan 14.4 billion over January-March, while the steelmaking and processing sector saw its gross profits soar less substantially by 387.6% on year, though the value was much higher at Yuan 87.1 billion.
As for nonferrous sector, smelting and processing sector posted a 471% on-year jump in gross profits to Yuan 55.5 billion, much higher than its upstream in both the growth and the value, as the nation’s nonferrous mining and processing sector achieved Yuan 9.7 billion in total gross profits, up 95.2% on year, according to the NBS data.
Source:Mysteel Global
