BEIJING (Reuters) - Profits earned by China's industrial firms in March rose 13.9 percent from a year earlier, rebounding from four months of contraction, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday.
Profits fell an average of 14 percent in the first two months of 2019 and have been contracting since November.
For the first three months of the year, industrial profits declined 3.3 percent on year to 1.3 trillion yuan, the statistics bureau said.
China's economy grew a faster-than-expected 6.4 percent in the first quarter helped by a jump in industrial production, but it is still too early to be optimistic as analysts expect a recovery only in the second half of the year.
Liabilities of industrial firms rose 6.5 percent on an annual basis by end-March, compared with a 6.0 percent rise as of end-February.
The data covers large companies with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan from their main operations.
(Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Michael Perry)
