Net profits of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China reached 1.75 trillion yuan ($274.52 billion) in January-November, the state asset regulator said on Saturday.
The companies’ total profits stood at 2.3 trillion yuan in the first 11 months of the year, with significant profitability improvement in the oil, steel and coal sectors, according to an official with the regulator.
Hao Peng, head of the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), also urged the companies to strictly control debt risks, and cut the scale of perpetual bonds in an orderly manner in the new year, according to the report.
“The task is to promote state-owned central enterprises to make greater contributions to stabilising the macroeconomic market and maintaining economic operations within a reasonable range,” Hao said in a statement on the SASAC website on Saturday.
SASAC is leading efforts to make SOEs more efficient through digitalisation.
“One of its key objectives is to enable the SASAC to pro-actively monitor and evaluate SOEs in real time, not only to identify problems ahead but also to benchmark performance of SOEs against local peers and international peers,” Edison Lee, equity analyst at Jefferies in Hong Kong, said.
“Such data could also allow the government to evaluate if M&A is necessary, which sector is performing better and why, if government policies are effective, and which industries and companies need more support.”
- Reuters, with George Russell
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