SOEs profits down 1.9% in Jan-Nov

China's State-owned enterprises (SOEs) gained 1.19 trillion yuan ($174 billion) in profits in the first 11 months this year, down 1.9 percent year-on-year, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement on its website Friday.

The rate of decline was 8.7 percentage points lower than that of the January-October period because of a lower comparison base. SOEs' profits were 1.06 trillion yuan in the first 10 months, down 10.6 percent year-on-year.

Centrally-administered SOEs and their subordinate enterprises' profits totaled 855.57 billion yuan in the first 11 months, up 1.1 percent year-on-year. Local-government-controlled SOEs' profits were 333.41 billion yuan, down 8.9 percent year-on-year.

SOEs' operating revenue in the January-November period was 20.14 trillion yuan, up 3.7 percent year-on-year. The taxes imposed on these enterprises increased 9 percent year-on-year to 1.75 trillion yuan.

Costs of the SOEs totaled 18.96 trillion yuan, up 4.1 percent year-on-year.

The sectors of petrochemicals, automobiles, real estate and building materials saw their profits increase the most while the tobacco industry saw a decline in profit.

In the first 11 months last year, China's SOEs experienced a sharp year-on-year drop in profits of 15.7 percent, as the impact of the global financial crisis started to weigh on the country's economy with falling enterprise output and profitability.

The SOEs covered by the ministry statistics included 131 enterprises administered by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, on behalf of the central government, enterprises affiliated to 82 central departments, and those administered by provincial, regional and municipal governments.

Source: BizChina