BEIJING, September 27 (TMTPost) – China’s industrial production steadily picked up in August, registering positive growth year over year for the first time since July 2022, according to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday. In August, industrial enterprises whose annual revenue from the main business exceeds 20 million yuan saw their profits go up by 17.2% year over year, compared with negative month-over-month growth of 6.7%. In the first eight months, profits of sizable industrial enterprises fell 11.7% year over year, compared with a year-over-year fall of 15.5% in the first seven months. Yu Weining, the chief statistician of the Industrial Department of the NBS, announced that the price fall of industrial products narrowed for two consecutive months while revenues turned around after year-over-year falls for three consecutive months. The three subsectors in the secondary sector all improved. In the first eight months of 2023, profits of mining companies fell 20.5% year over year in the first eight months, which was 0.5 percentage point less than that in the first seven months. Meanwhile, profits of manufacturing companies fell 13.7% year over year in the first eight months, which was 4.7% percentage points less than that in the first seven months. On the back of economic pickup, electricity supply in the summer and renewable energy production ramp-up, profits of electricity, heat, natural gas companies and water supply companies went up by 40.4% year over year in the first eight months, which was 2.4 percentage points more than that in the first seven months. Of the manufacturing sub-sector, equipment manufacturing companies saw a year-over-year increase of 3.6% in profits in the first eight months, which was 15.3 percentage points higher than that in the first seven months. Electrical machinery as well as railways, shipping, aerospace and aviation companies reported year-over-year increases of 33% and 32.5% in their profits respectively. The auto industry saw a year-over-year increase of 2.4% in their January-July profit, which was 1.4 percentage points more than that in the first seven months. Electronics companies also saw some improvement in their profits as their sales went up. With a rebound in downstream demand, the prices of commodities rallied in August, leading to higher profits in raw materials companies. Although materials companies saw their profits fall by 42.9% year over year in the first eight months, it was better than a year-over-year drop of 50.9% in the preceding period of January-July 2023.