China’s December industrial profits grow at slowest pace

For 2021, industrial firms’ profits rose by a whopping 34.3% year-on-year to 8.7 trillion yuan (RM5.77 trillion), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.

BEIJING: Profits at China’s industrial firms grew at a slower pace in December, according to the statistics bureau, as factory-gate inflation continued to ease, pointing to cooling demand amid mounting economic challenges.

Profits rose 4.2% year-on-year, the slowest rate since April 2020, to 734.2 billion yuan (US$115.89bil or RM486.94bil), compared with a 9% gain in November.