China industrial profit up in Nov

Profits at Chinese industrial companies returned to growth in January through November, ending a year of declines and offering clear evidence of a stronger recovery for the country’s businesses.

Profits at Chinese industrial companies returned to growth in January through November, ending a year of declines and offering clear evidence of a stronger recovery for the country’s businesses.

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Industrial profit nationwide rose 7.8 per cent in the first 11 months from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday.

That marked a dramatic turnaround from a fall of 10.6 per cent in the first eight months of the year.

Economists attributed the rise largely to a low base of comparison in the final months of 2008, when the world’s third-largest economy was hit hard by the global financial crisis.

“But we cannot ignore that the sequential growth rate has also picked up since April,” said Gao Shanwen, chief economist at Essence Securities in Beijing.

The energy and natural resources sectors, including power, steel and nonferrous metals, saw strong improvement on recovering demand and prices, chiming with other indicators to suggest that the economy’s recovery is gaining momentum.

Premier Wen Jiabao on Sunday gave a cautious outlook for the domestic economy in 2010, saying it was too early to wind down the government’s stimulus policies but that officials needed to be attentive to surging property prices and incipient inflation.

Profit at private companies rose 17.4 per cent from a year earlier compared with a rise of 6.6 per cent in January through August. Profit at foreign companies rose 16.9 per cent from a year earlier, compared with a 6.6 per cent fall.