China’s statistics bureau on Thursday said profit at China’s industrial firms grew at a slower pace in December amid continued inflation surge.
Profits rose 4.2% year-on-year, the slowest rate since April 2020, to 734.2 billion yuan ($115.89 billion), compared with a 9% gain in November.
The National Bureau of Statistics said, in 2021, industrial firms’ profits rose by a whopping 34.3% year-on-year to 8.7 trillion yuan.
“In 2021, the profits of industrial enterprises achieved relatively fast growth, with corporate efficiency steadily improving,” Zhu Hong, a senior NBS statistician, said in a statement.
“However, we must acknowledge that growth rates dropped significantly in November and December and that downstream firms, especially small firms, still face relatively big operational pressures and that the number of loss-making firms is still high,” Zhu said.
