BEIJING (Reuters) – Profits at China’s industrial firms in April fell 4.3% year-on-year to 478.1 billion yuan ($67 billion), the statistics bureau said on Wednesday.
The decline follows a 34.9% slump in March.
For the first four month, industrial firms’ profits fell 27.4% on an annual basis to 1.26 trillion yuan.
Liabilities at industrial firms rose 6.2% on year at end-April, versus a 5.4% growth as of end-March.
China’s economy has shown patchy signs of recovery as it reopens from tough virus containment measures that led to weeks of near paralysis.
However, pressure on earnings is expected to continue amid soft domestic consumption and investment as well as mounting employment strains.
(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley and Roxanne Liu; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
