Profits of China's iron and steel industry in the first five months dropped 37.4 percent over the same period of last year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Thursday.

The oil processing and coking industry reported a loss of 21.9 billion yuan (US$2.7 billion) in January-May.

Profits in the oil and natural gas exploration sector continued to soar with a year-on-year growth of 52.3 percent. The electric power sector also reported a good profit growth of 43 percent, while the profits in the coal sector grew 9.3 percent from the same period of last year.

The sector of non-ferrous metal smelting and processing reported a high profit growth of 106.9 percent in the first five months, and those of transportation device manufacturing up 75.7 percent.

The profits of electronics and telecommunication industry rose 32.5 percent, and chemical industry, 5.2 percent.

According to the NBS statistics, the profits of China's large scale industrial enterprises rose 25.5 percent year-on-year to 629.4 billion yuan in January-May.

The state-owned enterprises achieved 284.9 billion yuan in profits, reaping a rise of 15.3 percent.

The profits of collectively-owned enterprises grew 32.2 percent to 19.3 billion yuan, while those of the privately-owned ones increased 50.5 percent to 88.5 billion yuan.

The overseas-funded firms scored 176.9 billion yuan in profits in January-May, up 25.8 percent over the same period of last year.

(Xinhua News Agency June 22, 2006)