Profits of China's centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was 316.03 billion yuan (US$46.27 billion) in the first half of this year, the SOE watchdog said on Tuesday.

The profits dropped 26.2 percent over the same period last year, but the rate of decrease was 15.6 percentage points lower than the first quarter, said Li Rongrong, director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, at an SOE conference in Beijing.

The business revenue of the SOEs in the first half stood at 5.36 trillion yuan, down 6.3 percent from the same period last year, but the rate of decrease was 2.8 percentage points lower than the first quarter.

(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2009)