Revenues of China's centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) fell 11.8 percent year on year to 6 trillion yuan (about 857.14 billion U.S. dollars) during the first quarter, the country's state asset regulator said Monday.

Over 80 percent of central SOEs reported falling revenues during the period, Peng Huagang, spokesperson for the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, told a press conference.

It's a "hard-earned result," as the central SOEs have faced unprecedented challenges such as the novel coronavirus epidemic and slumping oil prices during the first quarter, Peng said. 

Direct-to-consumer industries like aviation, automobile and tourism have been hit hard by the epidemic, while the plunge in international crude oil prices has led to a significant reduction in profits by central oil and petrochemical enterprises, Peng explained to CGTN.

However, most central SOEs fared better in March as they revved up work resumption. Their revenues reached 2.2 trillion yuan, recovering to the level seen in January.

More than 99 percent of central SOEs have already resumed work and production with central SOEs in industries such as construction, automobile and tourism taking the lead.

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak, central SOEs have taken advantage of science and technology like big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and 5G technology to help fight the epidemic, Peng told CGTN.

Besides, the central pharmaceutical enterprises immediately initiated the emergency response mechanism for sudden epidemics, carrying out emergency scientific research in the fields like nucleic acid detection and vaccine research and development, Peng told CGTN.

The state asset regulator will also formulate a series of measures to guide SOEs to deepen reforms in the following three years to improve the modern enterprise system, speed up the establishment of a market-oriented operating mechanism and deepen mixed-ownership reform.

(With inputs from Xinhua)