China Industrial Profits Decelerated on Slower Factory Inflation

(Bloomberg) -- Profit growth at Chinese industrial firms decelerated at the start of this year amid weaker factory-gate inflation.

Industrial profits rose 16.1 percent in the first two months of 2018 from a year earlier, less than the 31.5 percent increase in the first two months of 2017. Total profits for the period were 969 billion yuan ($155 billion), the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday.

Industrial production accelerated in the first two months, offsetting slower gains in producer prices, the NBS said in a statement. The bureau cited pickups in non-metal minerals, petroleum, natural gas, heating and pharmaceuticals as the fastest-growing sectors.

The statistics bureau doesn’t release standalone year-on-year data for January or February. Those individual months are not published due to the different timing of the Lunar New Year holiday, which began in mid-February this year after starting at the end of January in 2017.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Yinan Zhao in Beijing at yzhao300@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey Black at jblack25@bloomberg.net, Jeff Kearns, Ken Wills

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.

With assistance from Yinan Zhao