Despite slower growth in sales revenue, China's major state-owned enterprises (SOE) still reported a surge in profits over the first two months, official figures said here on Monday.

In its latest update, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said that the country's 425 major state-owned enterprises raked in 158 billion yuan in aggregate profits in January and February, up 39 percent over the same period of last year.

Nearly 72 percent of the profits were made by petrochemical, telecommunications, electricity and metallurgy companies, up 36 percent year-on-year.

Metallurgy companies saw their profits shoot up four times, while chemical and automobile companies followed with a growth of 1.4 and 1.3 times respectively.

The SOEs, centrally or provincially administered, recorded 1.675 trillion yuan in aggregate sales revenue, up 17 percent on the same period of last year.

Exports surged 34 percent to 86 billion yuan, but accounted for only 5 percent of total sales revenue. Nearly half of the exports came from the electronics and metallurgy sectors.

(Xinhua News Agency April 3, 2007)