China's industrial profits declined 3.3 percent on an annual basis to 6.1996 trillion yuan (897.96 billion U.S. dollars) in 2019, the National Bureau of Statistics data showed on Monday.

The contraction in last year's profits came mainly from lack of market demand, drop of prices and increasing costs, said Zhu Hong, senior statistician from the bureau said in a statement.

Profits in key industries like steel, petrochemicals and automobiles fell markedly, with profit dropped by 37.6 percent, 25.6 percent and 15.9 percent respectively, said Zhu.

For the whole of 2019, profits at state-owned industrial firms dropped 12 percent. The total profits of foreign and Hong Kong and Macao invested enterprises reached 1,550 billion yuan, a decrease of 3.6 percent, while the total profits of private enterprises raised by 2.2 percent to reach 1,818 billion yuan.

High-tech manufacturing and strategic emerging industries profit kept growing, increased by 4.8 percent and 3.0 percent respectively from the previous year, which exceeds the performance of the industrial average.