BEIJING (Reuters) - Profits earned by China's industrial firms dropped 14.0 percent year-on-year to 708.01 billion yuan (£80 billion) in the first two months of 2019, the statistics bureau said on Wednesday.
The sharp decline follows December's 1.9 percent fall and marked the biggest contraction since Reuters began keeping records in October 2011.
The data combines figures for January and February to smooth out distortions caused by the week-long China's Lunar New Year.
Chinese industrial firms' liabilities rose 6.0 percent from a year earlier to 62.4 trillion yuan by end-February, compared with a 5.2 percent rise as of end-2018.
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 Shri Navaratnam)
