The profits of China's major industrial enterprises surged by 13.9 percent year on year in March, rebounding sharply as compared to the first two months of 2019, which saw a 14.0 percent year-on-year decrease, statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Saturday.

Both production and sale saw accelerated growth in March. The value-added of major industrial firms with annual revenues of more than 20 million yuan (about 2.97 million U.S. dollars) actually increased by 8.5 percent year on year, 3.2 percentage points higher than that of the first two months, with the operating income growing by 13.7 percent as compared to the same period of 2018, according to Zhu Hong, an NBS senior statistician.

Producer price of industrial products in March also rose 0.4 percent from a year earlier, ending the eight-month pullback of growth. It's tentatively estimated that the 26.8-billion-yuan increase of industrial profits from a year earlier was driven by the recovery of industrial products' price, which contributed 4.5 percentage points to the profit growth more than that of the first two months, Zhu said.

The auto, petroleum processing, steel and chemical industries rallied markedly by the new model introduction and reduced price, leading the overall industrial profit growth by 12.8 percentage points compared to the first two months, according to Zhu.

Benefit condition of industrial enterprises was improved as the profit margin in March inched up 0.01 percentage points at 6.13 percent compared with the previous year, Zhu added.

In the first three months, combined profits at major industrial companies amounted to 1.30 trillion yuan, 3.3 percent lower from a year earlier, with state-owned players seeing profits down 13.4 percent year on year, the NBS said.