China's industrial profits grew
significantly during the January-February period as the country is back
to normal from the impact of COVID-19, according to the National Bureau
of Statistics (NBS).
The profits of China's major
industrial firms surged by 179 percent year on year to 1.11 trillion
yuan ($170.31 billion) in the first two months of 2021, said the NBS in
a statement on Saturday.
Major industrial companies in
the country refer to those with an annual business turnover of at least
20 million yuan from their main operations.
The country's industrial profits
dropped by 38.3 percent in the same period last year, as the coronavirus
hit its production hard.
Industrial profits also saw a
72.1-percent increase compared to the January-February period in 2019,
according to the NBS.
Margins generated in the raw
material manufacturing sector skyrocketed 346 percent from the
year-earlier period as factory-gate prices rose at the quickest pace in
some two years.
Among the 41 industrial sectors
under the NBS measurement, 38 saw a quickened rise in terms of profits
for the first two months, and 24 encountered a 100-percent uptrend in
profits.
The country's value-added
industrial output went up by 35.1 percent in the first two months of the
year or by 16.9 percent compared to the same period in 2019, NBS data
showed.
Low comparison base and
"stay-put" Spring Festival facilitated the meteoric profit growth, but
the improvement in industries' performance is still uneven as some
consumer goods sectors have yet to catch up their pre-pandemic levels,
said Zhu Hong, a senior statistician at the NBS, in a press release.
China has set its GDP growth
rate at over 6 percent for 2021 as its economic recovery gathers steam.
In early March, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said that the number was "not
set in stone" but intended to "guide expectations."
Source: CGTN |