Profits for China’s industrial firms rose at a slower pace in December than the previous month, data showed on Friday, but clocked their fastest annual increase in six years as cost cutting and a construction boom helped businesses in 2017.
For the full year, profits surged 21.0 percent to 7.519 trillion yuan in 2017, the fastest pace since the 25.4 percent expansion in 2011, and accelerating from 2016’s 8.5 percent increase, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on its website.
The fast growth in 2017’s profits is largely due to the deepening of cuts in over-capacity and costs reduction efforts, He Ping of the statistics bureau said in a statement along with the data release.
