Industrial value-added output of Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) grew 16.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2011, 2.5 percentage points higher than the overall industrial value-added output level, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said Wednesday.

However, the number of SMEs reporting losses rose 0.3 percentage points year-on-year to reach 15.8 percent for the first two months of the year, with total losses up 22.3 percent year-on-year, MIIT chief engineer and spokesman Zhu Hongren said at a press conference concerning China's first-quarter industrial operations.