Industrial enterprise profits increased by 15.2% year-on-year in the first two months, with cumulative costs declining for the first time since 2022.

[Caixin] Driven by faster industrial production, improvements in the PPI (Producer Price Index), and other factors, the profits of industrial enterprises above the designated size in the first two months of 2026 rose year over year by 15.2% at a significantly faster pace than last year.

According to data released on March 27, 2026 by the National Bureau of Statistics, in the January–February period, China’s total profit of industrial enterprises above the designated size reached 10245.6 billion yuan; calculated on a comparable basis, this represented a year-on-year increase of 15.2%, which is 14.6 percentage points higher than the full year of 2025.

Wei Ning, chief statistician of the Industrial Division of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that, driven jointly by factors such as faster production and the rebound in product prices, business revenue growth in the first two months was clearly evident, creating favorable conditions for the recovery of enterprise profitability. In the first two months of 2026, the business revenue of industrial enterprises above the designated size increased by 5.2% year over year, accelerating by 4.2 percentage points compared with the full year of last year.