China Industrial Firms’ Profits Grow 21.9%

Profits earned by Chinese industrial firms in April rose at their fastest pace in six months, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Sunday, as factories benefited from higher prices and strong demand, Reuters reported. Profits in April rose 21.9% year-on-year to 576 billion yuan ($90.14 billion), the quickest since October, bringing gains for the first four months of 2018 to 15%. The data suggests China’s industrial sector is still seeing solid growth momentum despite curbs on pollution and rocky trade relations with the United States. Last month’s rebound was helped by lower comparison figures for April 2017, higher factory prices and stronger demand, He Ping, head of NBS’ industrial division, said in a statement. It was a significant improvement over March’s 3.1% growth that was the slowest in more than a year, and which government officials had blamed on the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday. China’s producer price inflation picked up to 3.4% in April from March, but was much lower than 6.4% in the year-ago period.