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China's industrial profits maintained growth momentum in the first two months of this year amid strengthening economic recovery, with steady improvement on both companies operations and profits.

The profits of China's major industrial firms totaled 1114 billion yuan ($17.43 billion) from January to February, a year-on-year increase of 1.79 times, or an increase of 72.1 percent over the first two months of 2019, continuing the rapid growth since the second half of last year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Saturday.

In the first 2 months of the year, the mining industry achieved a total profit of 98.84 billion yuan, an increase of 83.0 percent  year-on-year, and the manufacturing industry achieved a total profit of 929.42 billion yuan, an increase of 2.20 times.

The equipment and high-tech manufacturing also plays a more important role. From January to February, the profit of equipment manufacturing industry and high-tech manufacturing industry increased by 7.07 times and 3.08 times respectively year-on-year. Among them, the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry benefited from the rapid increase in demand for vaccines and its profit increased by 95.4 percent year-on-year.

NBS senior statistician Zhu Hong attributed the profit increase to stable demand from both home and abroad, and the policy of "stay-put" across the country also triggered the production.

But Zhu said that the profitability of some consumer goods industries has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, and the foundation for the full recovery of the industrial economy needs to be further consolidated, which still are the challenges ahead.

Global Times