China’s industrial giants remain under pressure as profits continue to decline, but at slower pace
- From January to April, China’s industrial giants’ profits were down 27.4 per cent
- This was a further slight improvement from the 36.7 per cent drop over the first three months, and the record 38.3 per cent drop from a year ago in the first two months of 2020
Profits at China’s big industrial firms continued to collapse in the first four months of the year under pressure from the economic damage caused by the coronavirus outbreak, although the decline showed signs of slowing.
Industrial firms saw profits fall by 27.4 per cent year-on-year over the first four months of 2020 to 1.26 trillion yuan (US$177 billion), data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released on Wednesday showed.
Overall, the tobacco and food processing sectors remained in profit for the first four months, and were joined by computer, communication and other electronic equipment manufacturing, the ferrous metal mining industry and paper making and paper products.
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The tobacco and food processing sectors had remained in profit in the first quarter with consumers continuing to buy daily essential goods amid the nationwide lockdowns to control the spread of the coronavirus.