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Sinopec retains lead in Top 500

Sinopec
Tom Miller

Oil refining giant China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) is the mainland's biggest company, according to a new list of the Top 500 Chinese Enterprises.

Sinopec beat off competition from State Grid Corp of China and PetroChina to claim the top spot for the fourth year running as the mainland's top companies began to close the gap on their global counterparts.

The list, which ranks companies by operational revenue, showed mainland enterprises becoming more competitive against their global peers as net profits rose 19 times faster than those of the global 500.

'The mainland's expanding economy has helped these companies in spite of price increases for oil and other materials,' Xinhua quoted China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) deputy president Li Jianming as saying.

The total revenue of the top 500 mainland companies came in at US$2.99 trillion, 12.7 per cent of the global top 500, while profit grew from 6.5 per cent of the global total last year to 11.9 per cent this year.

Sinopec reported revenue of 1.23 trillion yuan (HK$1.41 trillion), compared with State Grid's 1.01 trillion yuan and PetroChina's 1 trillion yuan.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was the top financial services company with revenue of 390.03 billion yuan while Baosteel Group was the top manufacturer with income of 227.72 billion yuan.

The table closely mirrored a similar list published by Fortune magazine last month which put 26 mainland and three Hong Kong companies in the global 500.

But the CEC report noted that mainland companies remain comparatively weak in international markets, with only 39 enterprises reporting overseas sales income of more than 30 per cent of total revenue.

Spending on research and development also remains low by international standards while logistics costs accounted for twice the world average, with poor supply chain management partly to blame.

'Our enterprises are still behind in innovation, investment in research and development and the ability to operate internationally. It will take a long time to catch up,' said Wang Jimin, another CEC deputy president.

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