Mainland industrial companies' profits climbed 4.5 per cent year on year last month to 438.9 billion yuan (HK$540.9 billion) on stronger demand - more evidence that the worst may be over for the world's second-biggest economy.
For the first three months, profits were down 1.3 per cent at 1.04 trillion yuan; they fell 5.2 per cent in the January-February period, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
The bureau, which polled enterprises with annual income of 20 million yuan, said increases in factory-gate prices helped cushion high raw material prices in the first quarter.
It said state-owned firms were hit hard by higher fuel prices, while foreign and Hong Kong enterprises, which rely heavily on exports, were hammered by poor demand overseas, a strengthening yuan and higher costs.
Some economists said the figures supported recent macroeconomic indicators such as the HSBC/Markit Economics' flash purchasing managers' index for this month, which climbed to 49.1 from 48.3 last month, and a bigger-than-expected rise in new bank lending last month, to more than 1 trillion yuan.
They said the improvement reflected the impact of a February cut in banks' reserve requirement ratio, or the proportion of cash banks must set aside rather than lend.
