SteelOrbis Shanghai
In the January-August 2008 period, profits of RMB 1.8685 trillion ($274.4 billion) were achieved by China's industrial enterprises with total annual sales revenues of over RMB 5 million, up 19.4 percent year on year. This growth was 17.6 percentage points lower than the growth recorded for the same period last year, indicating that China's economy has entered a stage of moderate growth following the previous high-growth phase.
Broken down into the various industrial sectors, in the January-August 2008 period profits in the oil and natural gas industry increased 54.7 percent; profits in the coal industry increased 142.8 percent year on year; the iron and steel industry's profits went up 31.5 percent; chemical industry profit rose 32.0 percent; profits in the building materials industry increased 40.3 percent; profits in special equipment manufacturing saw a rise of 20.2 percent; profits in transportation equipment manufacturing went up 35.1 percent; profits in telecom equipment manufacturing increased 18.2 percent; electric power industry profit dropped 81.6 percent; profits in non-ferrous metals smelting and pressing went down 7.4 percent; and the profit recorded by the chemical fiber industry decreased 47.1 percent; all compared with the same period last year. Meanwhile, the petroleum processing and coking industry registered a net loss of RMB 96.1 billion, whereas it had registered a profit of RMB 32.2 billion in January-August 2007.