BEIJING (Reuters) – Profits at Chinese industrial firms rose 28.2% year-on-year in October to 642.91 billion yuan ($97.79 billion), official data showed on Friday, pointing to a steady recovery in the manufacturing sector after it was hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Profits rose for a sixth straight month in October, after increasing by 10.1% year-on-year in September, the data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.
For the January-October period, industrial firms’ profits rose 0.7% on an annual basis, after falling 2.4% in the first nine months of 2020 compared with the same period last year.
Liabilities at industrial firms rose 6.8% on-year at end-October, versus a 6.6% growth as of end-September.
China’s industrial sector has seen an impressive recovery from the coronavirus shock earlier this year, helped by resilient demand for the country’s exports. Premier Li Keqiang said on Tuesday he expects Chinese economic activity to return to a reasonable range next year.
The industrial profit data covers large firms with annual revenue of over 20 million yuan from their main operations.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu, Lusha Zhang and Tony Monroe; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa)
