Profits of China’s major industrial companies saw a narrower decline in May as factories in the world’s second-largest economy restarted production lines as business sentiments improved, official data showed Monday.
Major industrial firms, each with business revenue of at least 20 million yuan (about 2.99 million U.S. dollars), saw their profits decline 6.5 percent year on year in May, narrowing from the 8.5-percent contraction in April, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.
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Revenues of these major firms went up 6.8 percent from a year ago last month, a faster growth pace compared with April, the data showed. China’s industrial economy is stabilizing and picking up, said Xin Guobin, vice minister of industry and information technology.
Commenting on the reading in May, senior NBS statistician Zhu Hong attributed the slower contraction to effective epidemic control, recovering business activities and progress achieved in smoothing logistics.
During the first five months, major industrial firms made about 3.44 trillion yuan in total profits, rising 1 percent from a year ago, NBS data showed. Of all 41 industrial sectors, 20 registered yearly profit growth or narrowed year-on-year profit contraction in May, while five managed to reverse the declining trend to post-profit expansion.
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Last month, the country’s northeastern region and the Yangtze River Delta, where the metropolis Shanghai is situated, reported a much smaller decline in industrial profits compared with April, as these areas gradually shook off the COVID-19 fallouts.
