REUTERS: Profits at China’s industrial firms grew at a faster pace in October, the statistics bureau said on Saturday, providing a buffer for a faltering economy battered by soaring raw material prices.
Profits in October rose 24.6 percent from a year earlier to 818.7 billion yuan ($128.1 billion), the official data showed, quickening from a 16.3 percent gain reported in September.
For the January-October period, industrial firms’ profits rose 42.2 percent year-on-year to 7.2 trillion yuan, slower than a 44.7 percent rise in the first nine months of 2021.
The industrial profit data covers large firms with annual revenues of over 20 million yuan from their main operations.
Prices in China have surged amid a power crunch and Beijing has been trying to cool a red-hot market for coal.