China's August industrial profits up 9.2 percent year on year, slowest growth since Dec 2016

BEIJING (Reuters) - Profits earned by China’s industrial firms in August rose 9.2 percent from a year earlier, slowing for the fourth straight month with growth nearly halving from the previous month, the National Statistics Bureau (NBS) said on Thursday.

FILE PHOTO: A labourer works inside an electronics factory in Qingdao, Shandong province, China January 29, 2018. REUTERS/William Hong/File Photo

Profits rose to 519.69 billion yuan ($75.58 billion) in August, following a 16.2 percent increase in July. The August growth rate was the slowest since March 2018.

Industrial profits increased 16.2 percent in the first eight months of 2018 compared with the same period last year, versus a 17.1 percent rise in January-July.

By the end of August, industrial firms’ liabilities grew 6.6 percent from a year earlier to 62.8 trillion yuan, compared with an increase of 6.5 percent by end-July.

The data covers large enterprises with annual revenues of more than 20 million yuan from their main operations.

($1 = 6.8763 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(The story corrects the milestone in headline and paragraph 2 to slowest growth since March, 2018, not Dec. 2016)

Reporting by Beijing Monitorng Desk; Editing by Shri Navaratnam

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

(Original source)