BEIJING (Reuters) – Profits earned by China’s industrial firms in March fell 34.9% from a year earlier to 370.66 billion yuan ($52.43 billion), the statistics bureau said on Monday.
The decline compares with a 38.3% slump in January-February, which was the steepest decline since at least 2010.
For January-March, industrial firms’ profits fell 36.7% on an annual basis to 781.45 billion yuan.
Liabilities at industrial firms rose 5.4% on year at end-March, versus a 5.3% increase as of end-February.
The industrial profit data covers large firms whose annual revenue exceeds 20 million yuan from their main operations.
The slide in profits reflects continued pressure on China’s manufacturing sector, hard-hit by slowing global demand from the coronavirus pandemic and the contraction of China’s economy for the first time in nearly 30 years in the first quarter.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Gabriel Crossley; Editing by Tom Hogue)
