Excavators transfer coal at a coal terminal in east China’s Jiangsu province on January 22, 2024.
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China’s industrial profits plunged by 17.8% in August from last year, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday.
That followed a 4.1% year-on-year rise in July, the fastest in five months.
Industrial profits include factories, mines and utilities in China.
During the first eight months, profits at large industrial companies rose 0.5% to 4.65 trillion yuan ($663.47 billion), compared with 3.6% in the first seven months.
The Chinese government has stepped up its efforts this week to support economic growth amid concerns that Beijing could miss its full-year GDP target of around 5%. Slow domestic demand, a prolonged housing slump and rising unemployment have weighed on the world’s second-largest economy.
On Thursday, China’s top leaders called for halting the property slump and strengthening fiscal and monetary policy support, according to a readout of a high-level meeting chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The People’s Bank of China on Friday officially cut the amount of cash banks must have, known as the reserve requirement ratio or RRR, by 50 basis points. The central bank also lowered the 7-day repurchase rate by 20 basis points to 1.5%, from 1.7% previously.
The rate cut followed an announcement by central bank governor Pan Gongsheng at a press conference on Tuesday.
In August, China’s industrial activity, retail sales and urban investment all grew more slowly than expected, with retail sales rising barely more than 2% and industrial production 4.5% from a year ago.
Among fixed asset investments, real estate fell 10.2% for the year to August, the same rate of decline in July. The city’s unemployment rate was 5.3% in August, up from 5.2% the previous month.
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