In the first 8 months of this year, profits generated by China's 500 key enterprises increased nearly 45 percent, with the growth rate going up over 42 percentage points year on year.

Statistics from the Information Center of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) show that from January to August, the business income of national key enterprises exceeded 2.83 trillion yuan, an increase of 24.7 percent, up at a rate 14 percentage points year on year.

Profits earned came to 244 billion yuan, up 44.9 percent. Of the above key enterprises, petrochemical, metallurgical, oil, and auto industries reaped profits all exceeding 10 billion yuan with a fast growth. The combined total of profits approached 130 billion yuan, accounting for more than half of the total profits reaped by the 500 key enterprises.

It is worthy of note that the key enterprises' stock of finished products were valued at above 248.6 billion yuan, up over 12 percent year on year. A personage with the SASAC disclosed that due to more increased production capacity than market demand and the rapid upgrading of products which resulted in the overstocking of some products, the stock of automobiles and electronic products went up over 42 percent and over 17 percent respectively, the total increase of these two sectors topped 10.4 billion yuan, representing 38.6 percent of the key enterprises' gross increase.

Meanwhile, the deficits of loss-making enterprises continue to rise substantially. By the end of August, of the 500 key enterprises, 85 losing businesses saw deficits of 11.67 billion yuan, an increase of over 50 percent, but the rate of increase was 14 percentage points lower than in July.

(China Daily September 29, 2003)