China’s industrial giants saw their monthly profits grow for a fourth consecutive month in August, while remaining negative over the first eight months of the year, reported the South China Morning Post.
In August, profits of large industrial firms increased 19.1% compared with a year earlier, though this was slightly slower than the increase of 19.6% in July, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
In the first eight months of the year, industrial profits at China’s biggest firms fell by 4.4% year-on-year, with May, June, July and August representing the only months of growth so far in 2020. In August alone, profits stood at RMB 612.81 billion ($89.8 billion).
Total profits in for the first eight months of the year reached RMB 3.716 trillion ($544.5 billion), with state-owned enterprises seeing a year-on-year decrease of 17% to RMB 950.94 billion, foreign-invested enterprises (including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan-funded ones) registering a decrease of 0.4% to RMB 1.038 trillion, and private enterprises seeing a decrease of 3.3% to RMB 1.069 trillion.