China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) gained 1.19 trillion yuan (US$174 billion) in profits in the first 11 months this year, down 1.9 percent year-on-year, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement on its website Friday.

The rate of decline was 8.7 percentage points lower than that of the January-October period. SOEs' profits were 1.06 trillion yuan in the first 10 months, down 10.6 percent year-on-year.

Centrally-administered SOEs and their subordinate enterprises' profits totaled 855.57 billion yuan in the first 11 months, up 1.1 percent year-on-year. Local-government-controlled SOEs' profits were 333.41 billion yuan, down 8.9 percent year-on-year.

SOEs' operating revenue in the January-November period was 20.14 trillion yuan, up 3.7 percent year-on-year. The taxes imposed on these enterprises increased 9 percent year-on-year to 1.75 trillion yuan.

Costs of the SOEs totaled 18.96 trillion yuan, up 4.1 percent year-on-year.

The sectors of petrochemicals, automobiles, real estate and building materials saw their profits increase the most while the tobacco industry saw a decline in profit.

(chinadaily.com.cn December 18, 2009)