Chinese industrial firms' profits up

Chinese industrial firms’ profits up

China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said that the country's major industrial companies saw a year-on-year profit increase of 15.8% to RMB 496.8 billion (around $60 billion) in the first five months of 2005. The growth rate was nearly 28 percentage points lower compared to last year due to the long-term price hike of raw materials and energy products. The NBS also indicates that the profits showed significant increases in the coal (88%), oil (71.8%), ferrous mineral (35.6%), non-ferrous mineral (149.7%) and non-metal mineral (51.6%) industries.