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Industry profits rise in March

China's major industrial firms continued to post double-digit growth in March, adding to signs of a stabilizing Chinese economy, official data showed on Thursday. The companies reported a 23.8-percent year-on-year profit growth last month, slowing from 31.5 percent in January and February but still much faster than the 8.5-percent increase in 2016, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. In the first three months of the year, profits of major industrial firms rose 28.3 percent year-on-year, the NBS said in a statement. The industrial sector, which accounts for about a third of China's GDP, started to pick up last year after profit declines in 2015, helped by government efforts to cut overcapacity and a recovery of the property industry. Value-added industrial output expanded 6.8 percent year-on-year in the first three months.

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