China's industrial firms' profits slow on high commodity prices

[BEIJING] Profit growth at China's industrial companies slowed in November to the weakest in more than a year as still-high commodity prices continued to hit profitability.

Industrial profit growth decelerated to 9 per cent in November from a year earlier, the slowest pace since last May, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Monday (Dec 27). For the first 11 months of the year, profits climbed 38 per cent from a year earlier.

Profits of coal miners and crude oil suppliers both rose more than 200 per cent in the first 11 months of this year as commodity prices soared, but that has undermined the position of firms that use these products, with the fall in profits of electricity and heating producers worsening compared to the year through October.

"Cost pressures remain relatively large," Zhu Hong, a senior statistician at the NBS, said in a statement. However profit declines at manufacturers of cars and general equipment narrowed in November due to the easing of a chip shortage and improving market demand, she wrote.

BLOOMBERG