Profits of China's major industrial firms rose 2.6 percent year-on-year in July, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Tuesday.

July's figure compared with a 3.1 percent decline in June. For January-July, profits were down 1.7 percent from a year earlier.

Oil, chemical, electrical machinery, and automobiles are the four main industries that drive the profit growth. The four industries contributed in accelerating the profit growth by 5.3 percentage points from June.

Private enterprise' profits increased by 11.4 percent year-on-year in July, and the growth rate was 9.7 percentage points faster than in June.

The profit of consumer goods manufacturing increased by 10 percent year-on-year in July. The growth rate is 6.1 percentage points faster than that in June.

Equipment manufacturing profit increased by 4.8 percent year-on-year in July, the growth rate was down by 1.1 percent in June.

The data covers companies with more than 20 million yuan in annual revenue from their main operations.

Zhu Hong, an NBS senior statistician, cautioned that the downward pressure on the economy is relatively high with the slowing down market demand and falling prices of industrial products, even as the profit growth rate of industrial enterprises in July has turned from negative to positive. Zhu added that efforts should be made in promoting steady growth of corporate profits.