China's industrial enterprises above designated size achieved a total profit of 5.6 trillion yuan (about $870 billion) in the first eight months of 2021, with a year-on-year increase of 49.5 percent, slowing from a 57.3-percent gain in the January-July period, official data showed Tuesday.

Profits rose 10.1 percent from a year earlier to 680.3 billion yuan in August, compared with a 16.4-percent increase in July, slowing for a sixth consecutive month, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.

"A sustained and stable recovery in corporate profits is facing more challenges," said Zhu Hong, senior statistician at the NBS, in a statement. 

"The COVID-19 is still spreading in some areas, overall prices of bulk commodities are high, the cost of international logistics is elevated, and the shortage of chips is pushing up corporate costs," Zhu explained.

Earlier this month, China released crude oil from its national reserves for the first time to alleviate stress on businesses over rising raw material costs.

Partly due to surging coal prices and shortages, a handful of provinces across the country are facing a power crunch that has forced factories to cease operations, clouding the economic outlook.

Nomura has further cut its forecast for the country's GDP growth in the third quarter and the fourth quarter to 4.7 percent and 3 percent, respectively, from 5.1 percent and 4.4 percent. 

Read more:

China State Grid promises power for nation after scattered outages

The electricity, heat, gas and water production and supply industries achieved a total profit of 329.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.5 percent.

The mining industry achieved a total profit of 591.3 billion yuan from January to August, a year-on-year increase of 151 percent, while the manufacturing industry registered a total profit of 4.68 trillion yuan, an increase of 48.2 percent year on year. 

During the first eight months, state-owned companies realized a total profit of 1.77 trillion yuan, an increase of 86.9 percent year on year. Private enterprises realized a total profit of 1.64 trillion yuan, an increase of 34.4 percent year on year.

The data covers companies with annual revenues of over 20 million yuan from their main operations.