For the first half of 2021, China’s sizable industrial firms saw their gross profits surge by 66.9% on year or 45.5% higher than the corresponding period of 2019, according to the latest release by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on July 27, reflecting the strong recovery in demand and their overall performance, and bulk commodities sectors did post higher gains.
In H1, these industrial firms’ gross profits totalled Yuan 4.22 trillion ($651 billion), while for June alone, the growth in the sector slowed down further, up 20% on year to Yuan 791.8 billion against the 36.4% on-year gain for May, according to the NBS.
“In H1, industrial enterprises saw their profits recover steadily and their businesses had also improved, but among them, privately-owned and small and micro enterprises had shown a relatively slower recovery in profits,” Zhu Hong, the NBS’s senior statistician, was quoted in the release commenting.
“In addition, high bulk commodities prices have been squeezing enterprises’ profits,” she highlighted. Bulk commodities in question include steel, copper, and aluminum, according to Beijing’s repeated warning on the high prices.
The country’s nonferrous smelters and fabricators, for example, posted the second fastest growth in profit among the 41 sectors, up 272.8% on year to Yuan 140.4 billion in H1, while its upstream – the mining and processing sector saw its profit grow by 83.5% on year to Yuan 23.6 billion.
The growth in profits among China’s steel mills and fabricators was ranked the fourth, up 234.1% on year to Yuan 267.1 billion, and its upstream mining sector posted an 187.9% on-year gain in gross profit to Yuan 38 billion, according to the official statistics.
In H1, among the country’s 41 industrial sectors, 36 saw their profits gain by at least two digits on year, seven reported their profits more than doubling on year, while compared with the same period of 2019, 29 industrial sectors’ gross profits grew, the NBS data showed.
Among all the 41 industrial sectors, petrochemical plants ranked the top in terms of gross profits, totalling Yuan 380.4 billion in H1, or up 176.8% on year, and computer, telecommunication and other electronic devices sector ranked the second with the profits up 45.2% on year to Yuan 345.2 billion, and pharmaceutical sector the third with the profits up 88.8% on year to about Yuan 300 billion, according to the official data.
Written by Rong Zhang, zhangronga@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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