BEIJING (Reuters) – Profits at China’s industrial firms surged 20.1% year-on-year in December to 707.11 billion yuan ($109.40 billion), official data showed on Wednesday.
The rebound followed a 15.5% gain in November and marked the eighth month of growth in a row, according to data from National Bureau of Statistics.
For the full year of 2020, annual profits for China’s industrial firms grew 4.1% year-on-year to 6.45 trillion yuan, recovering from a 3.3% on-year decline seen in 2019. It was also quicker than a 2.4% gain seen in January-November.
China is the only major economy in the world to avoid a contraction in 2020, with gross domestic product growing 2.3% for the full year, while many countries remain crippled by pandemic jolt.
Economists polled by Reuters expect China’s GDP to rise 8.4% in 2021, the fastest pace in a decade. However, some analysts cautioned that a slower recovery in consumption and potential rapid slowdown in credit growth could be risks for the Asian powerhouse.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu, Stella Qiu and Ryan Woo; Editing by Sam Holmes)
