Business & Economy

Industrial profits in China fell 8.1% year-on-year through July

Beijing, Aug 27 (efe-epa).- The profits of China’s main industrial companies fell 8.1 percent year-on-year in the first seven months of 2020 due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the country’s statistics office.

According to the office, earnings in the January-July period were 3.10 trillion yuan ($449,862 million).

However, the indicator registered a 19.6 percent year-on-year increase in July – the fastest rise since June 2018 – due to the 11.5 percent year-on-year rise in June and the 6 percent rise in May, the first month of the year registering growth.

For the elaboration of this indicator, the office only takes into account those industrial companies with annual revenues of more than 20 million yuan ($2.9 million).

Of the 41 sectors collected by the statistics, 29 registered a reduction in their profits in the January-July period, while the remaining 12 increased them.

Likewise, the profits of state-owned companies fell 23.5 percent in the first seven months of the year, while private companies did so by 5.3 percent.

Among the mainly affected are the industries of oil, coal and other fuel processing (-107.9 percent), oil and gas extraction (-72.1 percent) or machinery and equipment repair (-42 percent).

At the opposite extreme, companies dedicated to the manufacture of electronic equipment, communications and computers (28.7 percent), tobacco (22.8 percent) or the agricultural and food processing industries (20.1 percent) increased their profits.

the office statistician Zhu Hong said the performance of the industries has been improving after the resumption of production, despite which there are still “liquidity problems” among companies, which also have to face “uncertainties due to the complex and serious situation” derived from COVID-19.

Despite this, the expert said Chinese industrial companies “have been reducing their losses,” and that the objective now is “to expand investments” and “strengthen foreign trade.”

“It is important to meet potential domestic demand and stabilize the supply chain so that companies can continue to consolidate their situation,” he said.

The indicator registered a reduction of 4.3 percent year-on-year in April, while in March the fall had been 34.9 percent and in the months of January and February – for which the office offered bimonthly data – of 38, 3 percent. EFE-EPA

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