The profits of China's car industry saw a 52.9 percent down in the first three quarters of 2005, 13.5 percentage points less than the first half of 2005, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday.

The sales revenue of China's car industry saw a mere 0.4 percent increase while the cars sold increased 18 percent in the January-September period.

The NBS said the sales revenue of the major 15 auto manufacturers rose 4.4 percent, with a profit down 51.3 percent year-on-year.

Of the 15 manufacturers, only three reported increases of profits, the NBS said.

The statistics show that China produced altogether 270,200 cars in September, an increase of 53.2 percent year-on-year and 7.4 percent more than August.

In the first three quarter, 2,113,100 cars had been produced, a year-on-year increase 17.1 percent.

The NBS said two kinds of uncertainties have shown up in China's car market. The first is that China produced more cars than it sold in the last four months, with the result of the storage of close to 40,000 cars.

In addition, despite of rise of sales of some economical cars like Xiali and Chery, that of middle and high grade cars saw drops, and even slumps, in the last two months.

Through promotion campaigns, Shanghai Volkswagen Corp. achieved a sales rise in the August-September period, cutting the storage of nearly 8,000 cars, in contrast to an increase of 30,000 cars of storage by other manufacturers in the same period.

(Xinhua News Agency October 27, 2005)