Chinese major state-owned enterprises (SOE) reported fast profit growth in the first ten months, showed the government statistics released here Tuesday.

The 446 companies made profits of 744.56 billion yuan (around US$95 billion) in the January-October period, up 18.6 percent year-on-year, according to statistics by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

The growth rate is 4.8 percentage points and 0.4 percentage points higher than the figure in the first half year and the first three quarters respectively.

Some sectors even reported profit growth rate of more than 22 percent, including construction materials, non-ferrous metal, automobile, power and textile.

The sales revenue of the 446 companies rose 20.3 percent in the period to 8379.1 billion yuan (107 billion U.S. dollars). The growth rate for non-ferrous metal, automobile, construction and electronic sectors is above 25 percent.

The cost growth, which stood at 20.5 percent in the first ten months, slows down for the major state-owned enterprises, showed the statistics.

In the period, the 446 companies delivered exports worth of 445.61 billion yuan (US$56.9 billion), up 32.3 percent year-on-year. 142.9 billion yuan (US$18.25 billion) of the exports are from the electronic industry.

(Xinhua News Agency December 6, 2006)