China's major SoEs see big profit hikes
ANN/China Daily
China's major state-owned enterprises maintained a sharp profit growth in the first three quarters of the year, fuelled by strong performance of oil, power and transportation sectors. The 474 key State-owned enterprises (SoEs), the flagships of their industries, earned 460 billion yuan (US$55.6 billion) in gross profits in the first nine months of 2004, a 44.9 per cent increase on a year-on-year basis. The growth rate was 6.3 percentage points higher than that of the first six months, according to statistics released on the website of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) on Monday. These enterprises also saw a 28.5 per cent increase in industrial output, which totalled 3.4 trillion yuan (US$410.6 billion) in the first three quarters. The best performers were transportation and coal enterprises, which grew 8.8 and 1.6 times. Meanwhile, those in petrol and chemicals, grew 54.6 per cent and in metal, 84.5 per cent. They jointly contributed about 78 per cent of the overall profit growth of the 474 key SoEs.
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