The sales revenue of China's centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) jumped 25.7 percent to 5.77 trillion yuan (84.6 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of 2008, the state assets regulator said on Tuesday.

The growth was 5.4 percentage points higher than the same period a year earlier, according to State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) statistics.

Profit of these SOEs, however, was down 10.3 percent year on year to 425.6 billion yuan during the same period.

Petroleum, petrochemical and power industries suffered the heaviest losses with coal and crude oil prices surging on the global market. Prices for electricity and oil products were capped by the government.

With these industries deducted, profit of state companies would mark a year-on-year increase of 22.6 percent in the first six months, SASAC said.

Some sectors reported a more than 30 percent increase in profit in the first half, including auto manufacturers, coal producers and the military industry, whose profit surged 70.3 percent, 44.4 percent and 33.8 percent respectively.

(Xinhua News Agency Juy 23, 2008)