Figures released Wednesday by the National Bureau of Statistics show that the net profits of Chinese industrial enterprises surged 30.4 percent year-on-year to 166.97 billion yuan (US$20.12 billion) in the period. The growth rate of profits in the period was 4.7 percentage points slower than that for January-April.

Meanwhile, money-losing enterprises reduced losses by 10.4 percent over the same period of last year to 54.58 billion yuan (US$6.58 billion), 3.4 percentage points less than the reduction of losses in the first four months of the year.

NBS figures show that the composite index of economic efficiency of industrial enterprises rose eight points over the same period of last year to 116.5 during January-May. The index was also 2.3 points higher than in the first four months of the year.

Industrial enterprises registered total sales of 3,453.58 billion yuan (US$416.09 billion) in the first five months, 15.2 percent more than in the same period of last year. However, the growth was 0.7 percentage points lower than for January-April.

Stockpiles at industrial enterprises grew 7.6 percent year-on-year to 692.77 billion yuan (US$83.47 billion) at the end of May, maintaining the growth rate at the end of April.

The SOEs registered a total net profit of 90.52 billion yuan (US$10.9 billion) during the period as loss-making SOEs reduced losses by 17.7 percent over one year ago.

(Xinhua 06/27/2001)