China's industrial profits maintain rapid growth in Q1 as production, sales improve

Profits of China's major industrial firms maintained fast expansion in the first quarter this year as the Chinese economy continued its recovery and enterprises' production and sales further restored growth, official data showed Tuesday.

Industrial firms with an annual business turnover of at least 20 million yuan (about 3.08 million U.S. dollars) raked in 1.83 trillion yuan in combined profits during the first three months, surging 137 percent year on year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

When compared with the same period in 2019, the figure jumped 50.2 percent. The fast expansion also put the average first quarter growth of 2020 and 2021 at 22.6 percent from the 2019 level, NBS data showed.

In March alone, profits of major industrial firms jumped 92.3 percent year on year to 711.18 billion yuan.

The rapid growth in production and sales was one of the major driving forces pushing up profits of China's industrial firms, NBS senior statistician Zhu Hong said.