Chinese industrial firms' profits up 34.3% in first two months

BEIJING, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Profits for China's biggest industrial companies rose 34.3 percent year to year to reach 645.5 billion yuan (about 97.8 billion U.S. dollars) in the first two months this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Sunday.

The combined revenues of these industrial companies climbed 31 percent from last year to reach 10.7 trillion yuan in the January-February period, the NBS said in a report on its website.

The report was based on a survey of industrial companies with annual sales exceeding 20 million yuan each. The threshold used before 2011 was five million yuan.

Combined profits for state-owned and state-controlled companies increased 25 percent year to year to 224 billion yuan while those of collectively-owned companies jumped 39.3 percent to 9.9 billion yuan.

In the first two months, foreign-funded enterprises and those funded by investors from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan registered an annual profit increase of 26 percent, totaling 181.3 billion yuan, the NBS said.

Out of the 39 industries surveyed, 38 reported profit growth in the January-February period, while one industry reported a decline in losses.

The ferrous metal mining and smelting industry reported a 110-percent increase in year-to-year profits while the petroleum and natural gas exploration industry's profits rose 18.7 percent.

China's chemical fiber sector increased by 1.3 times compared to the same period from last year, the NBS said.