BEIJING: The tough time is not over for China’s nonferrous metals producers as the industry’s profits continued to decline in the first eight months of 2015.
In the Jan.-Aug. period, the industry reaped profits of 101.6 billion yuan (16 billion U.S. dollars), down 4.2 percent year on year, statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed.
Profits in the mining and smelting sectors were down 19.9 percent and 8.6 percent respectively.
The tepid global economic recovery, a consumption slowdown and stronger dollar have weighed on the nonferrous metals industry. Last year, the industry’s profits stood at 205.3 billion yuan, down 1.5 percent.
State-owned enterprises continued to be major loss makers in the first eight months, with their profits accounting for a mere 1 percent of the industry’s profits in general, down from 6.5 percent last year.
The output of nonferrous metals in the first eight months stood at 339 million tonnes, up 9.4 percent.
