China's industrial firms saw profits increase by 8.5 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2022, maintaining steady growth, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday.

Major industrial enterprises achieved total profits of 1955.57 billion yuan ($298 billion) during the January-March period in 2022, increasing from the January-February period of 1157.56 billion yuan.

Industrial firms achieved steady first-quarter growth having benefited from governmental initiatives that included tax cuts and fee reductions, said Zhu Hong, a senior NBS statistician. Profits in the mining industry were up by 148%, but manufacturing (2.1%) and the production and supply of electricity, heat, gas and water (30.3%) declined.

Zhu cited factors that also created downward pressure on growth in the industrial economy – "Imported inflation, and the sporadic outbreak of COVID-19 across the country have brought challenges to enterprises."

Profits of industrial firms in Q1 2022 dropped 3.8 percentage points from the fourth quarter of last year.

(Cover photo via CFP)