IN BRIEF (Page 13)

SOEs post net profit increase

China's State-owned enterprises (SOEs), which are administered by the central government, posted a net profit increase of 18.2 percent year-on-year in the first four months of the year. The pace of the increase was 4.2 percentage points lower than that seen in the first quarter.

The combined net profits of the 121 central SOEs totaled 291 billion yuan ($45 billion) during the January-April period, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said in a statement on its website on Monday.