Stronger March China industrial profits add to economic recovery hopes

Beijing

PROFITS earned by Chinese industrial companies rose 11.1 per cent in March from a year earlier, adding to signs that the country's economic slowdown may be bottoming out.

Industrial profits rose to 561.24 billion yuan (S$116.7 billion) in March, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on its website on Wednesday. That brought total first-quarter profits to 1.34 trillion yuan, up 7.4 per cent from a year earlier and improving from a 4.8 per cent rise in the January-February period.

The data covers large enterprises with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan from their main operati…