Profit growth of industrial companies slows last year

Profit of China's industrial firms increased by 10.3 percent year-on-year in 2018, 1.5 percentage points lower than the first 11 months of last year, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday.

Analysts said the data show the pressure on industrial companies, but China's consistent push for high-quality growth will help enterprises better deal with slowdowns in sales and their debt-asset ratios are likely to continue dropping.

The bureau said the profits of China's major industrial firms totaled 6.635 trillion yuan ($985.8 billion) in 2018. Profits in 32 of the 41 sectors surveyed rose compared with a year earlier, two less than during the January-November period.