People’s Daily recently reported, based on data from the Chinese Ministry of Finance, that state-owned enterprises suffered an overall decline in profit of 13.8 percent (year-over-year) in the first quarter. Further drilldown shows that the central government owned enterprises declined 13.2 percent in profit and local government owned enterprises declined by 15.8 percent. For first quarter revenue, overall state-owned enterprises saw a three percent year-over-year decline, with the drilldown number for the central government owned enterprises at 4.6 percent and 0.1 percent for the local ones. By the end of March, overall state-owned enterprises suffered a debt increase of 18.1 percent. In particular, the enterprises that the central government owns saw an increase in debt of 22.4 percent.
Source: People’s Daily, April 26, 2016
http://energy.people.com.cn/n1/2016/0426/c71661-28305979.html