In the January-February period this year, enterprises in China’s ferrous metal smelting and rolling sector recorded an overall gross loss of RMB 1.55 billion ($0.22 billion), as announced by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on March 27.
The automotive sector recorded a gross profit of RMB 61.96 billion ($8.6 billion) in the given period, up 11.7 percent year on year.
At the same time, the ferrous metals mining and dressing sector, the metal manufacturing sector and the railway, shipping, aerospace and other transportation equipment manufacturing sector recorded gross profits of RMB 5.61 billion ($0.8 billion), RMB 19.09 billion ($2.7 billion) and RMB 15.22 billion ($2.1 billion) in the first two months, down 56.6 percent, up 1.0 percent and up 88.8 percent year on year, respectively.
In the given period, the aggregate gross profit of large and medium-sized industrial enterprises in China amounted to RMB 910.99 billion ($127 billion), down 0.3 percent year on year.