Industrial enterprise profits increased by 15.2% year-on-year in the first two months, with cumulative costs declining for the first time since 2022.

【Caixin Net】 Affected by the acceleration of industrial production and improvements in the PPI (Producer Price Index for industrial products), among other factors, in the first two months of 2026, profits of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 15.2% year on year, with the growth rate accelerating markedly compared with the previous year.

Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on March 27, 2026 shows that, from January to February, China’s industrial enterprises above designated size realized total profits of CNY 10,245.6 billion. Measured on a comparable basis, this represented a year-on-year increase of 15.2%, which is 14.6 percentage points higher than in all of 2025.

Wei Ning, chief statistician of the Industrial Division of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that driven jointly by factors such as faster production and a rebound in product prices, operating revenue grew significantly in the first two months, creating favorable conditions for enterprises to restore profitability. In the first two months of 2026, operating revenue of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 5.2% year on year, accelerating by 4.2 percentage points compared with the whole of the previous year.