China's Industrial Profits Growth Slows in March

BEIJING--Profits in China's industrial sector rose 23.8% from a year earlier last month, slowing from a 31.5% year-over-year growth in the first two months, official data showed Thursday.

Growth in raw-material products outpaced the increase for finished goods in March, leading to a moderation in profit growth for large industrial firms, National Bureau of Statistics economist He Ping said in a statement accompanying the data release.

Although profit growth slowed in March, it remained at a relatively fast clip as growth rates started to normalize, the economist said.

Industrial profits climbed 28.3% in the January to March period from a year earlier, after growing 8.5% in 2016, according to the statistics bureau.

Profits of state-owned firms rose 70.5% in the first three months from a year earlier, while profits of private firms increased 15.9%, the bureau said.

At the end of March, leverage ratio of large industrial firms was 56.2%, down from 56.9% in the same period a year earlier.

Write to Liyan Qi at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 26, 2017 22:09 ET (02:09 GMT)

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