Tough times to continue

Government policies to curb lavish spending of public funds continue to squeeze the profits of high-end restaurants, despite efforts to target non-governmental trade, according to an industry report.

The report said the China Cuisine Association's attempts to boost the number of non-governmental customers produced a slowdown in profit decline in the third quarter of 2013.

The association said the industry has been improving slowly, with a 8.9 percent year-on-year rise in revenue in the first three quarters of last year. Growth was down by 4.3 percentage points, but the decline was slower than that seen in the first half.