Sharp Decline in Profits for Chemical Manufacturing in First Eight Months

According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on September 27, the total profits of industrial enterprises above a designated size in China from January to August amounted to 4,655.82 billion yuan. This marked an 11.7% year-on-year decrease, though the decline was 3.8 percentage points narrower than that reported for January to July. Notably, the manufacturing industry of chemical raw materials and chemical products experienced a staggering 51.1% year-on-year drop in profits during this period.

Further details reveal that, during the same timeframe, state-owned holding enterprises saw their total profit decrease by 16.5% to 1.58416 billion yuan, joint-stock enterprises reported a 12.1% decrease to 3.40184 billion yuan, foreign-invested and Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan-invested enterprises registered an 11.1% decrease to 1,109.27 billion yuan, and private enterprises experienced a 4.6% decrease to 1,248.72 billion yuan.

Notably, profits improved in all three categories. The mining industry reported a 20.5% year-on-year decrease in total profit to 890.63 billion yuan, the manufacturing industry saw a 13.7% decrease to 3.29828 billion yuan, and the electricity, heat, gas, and water production and supply industry recorded a remarkable 40.4% increase to 466.91 billion yuan.

Analyzing various sectors, 30 out of the 41 major industrial industries experienced improved profit growth or narrowed declines, with some even turning from losses to gains, exceeding a 70% increase in profitability. Specifically, the electricity and heat production and supply industry reported a 53.4% year-on-year profit increase, electrical machinery, and equipment manufacturing rose by 33.0%, general equipment manufacturing increased by 12.9%, special equipment manufacturing saw a 3.6% increase, and the automobile manufacturing industry grew by 2.4%.

Conversely, the oil and natural gas extraction industry reported a 10.8% decrease, the textile industry faced a 15.0% decline, the computer, communications, and other electronic equipment manufacturing industry experienced a 20.6% drop, and the agricultural and sideline food processing industry saw a 26.0% decrease. The coal mining and washing industry, non-metallic minerals industry, products industry, non-ferrous metal smelting, and rolling processing industry, chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing industry, ferrous metal smelting and rolling processing industry, and petroleum, coal, and other fuel processing industry all reported substantial decreases, ranging from 26.3% to 68.9%.

In a positive turn, in August, profits for industrial enterprises above the designated size rebounded with a year-on-year growth of 17.2%.