According to the financial data of industrial enterprises recently released by the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to April, the profits of industrial enterprises above designated size in the country increased by 6.5% year-on-year, and the growth rate was 0.9 percentage points lower than that in the first quarter. Among them, the profit in April increased by 4.2%, and the growth rate was 6.9 percentage points lower than that in March.

Liang Jing, a researcher at the Bank of China's Institute of International Finance, said that the decline in industrial profit growth is mainly due to the slowdown in economic demand and income from non-main activities. In April, the growth rates of investment, consumption, and exports all fell back, making it difficult to form a strong support for industrial production and sales. The main business income of enterprises increased by 2% year-on-year, a drop of 2.6 percentage points from March. At the same time, the driving effect of income from non-main activities on profits failed to continue. Enterprise investment income changed from a rise of 20.4% in March to a decline of 19.8% in April; non-operating net income increased by 56.2% year-on-year, a decrease of 12.1 percentage points from the previous month. The contribution of investment income and non-operating net income to industrial new profits decline.

He Ping, director of the Industrial Efficiency Division of the Industry Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that investment income has changed from rising to falling, and its effect on profit growth has also changed from positive to negative, causing the profit growth rate of all industrial enterprises above designated size to drop by 2.7 percentage points.

In addition, Guo Lei, chief macro analyst at Founder Securities, pointed out that there is a base effect in the decline in the profit growth rate of industrial companies in April. There were 20 working days in April 2016, and 21 working days from 2012 to 2015; the working days in March this year were one day more than the same period last year. This would lead to an overstatement of the March figure and an understatement of the April figure.

Many experts believe that, on the whole, the industrial enterprise efficiency data released this time still show some positive changes. He Ping believes that positive changes are mainly manifested in four aspects. First, the profits of industrial enterprises in April continued the growth trend since the beginning of the year. Since the beginning of this year, the monthly profits of industrial enterprises have maintained growth, which has changed the situation of declining profits in 2015. Second, the profits of the high-tech manufacturing industry grew rapidly. From January to April, the profits of the high-tech manufacturing industry increased by 21.6% year-on-year, and the growth rate was 15.1 percentage points higher than that of all industrial enterprises above designated size. Third, the decline in profits of major raw material industries such as iron and steel and non-ferrous metals has been reversed. Fourth, there was a negative growth in the inventory of finished goods. At the end of April, the inventories of finished goods of industrial enterprises fell by 1.2% year-on-year, the first negative growth in recent years, indicating that the inventory pressure of enterprises is easing, which is conducive to the release of enterprise capacity and the increase of production in the future.

Guo Lei said that among the industries with relatively high prosperity in the near future, one is black and non-ferrous smelting, and the growth rate has turned from negative to positive, obviously benefiting from the narrowing of deflation, high operating rates in the midstream and changes in price expectations; Both food processing and food manufacturing bucked the trend and accelerated slightly from the previous month, obviously benefiting from the formation of the reflation cycle; the third is the electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing industry, whose growth rate increased by 1.4 percentage points, which should be in line with the growth rate of new fixed asset investment projects. related to high growth.

Liang Jing believes that it is still hard to be optimistic about the trend of future improvement in the efficiency of industrial enterprises, and it depends on policy support in the short term. At present, the downward pressure on the economy is still relatively high, and the problem of overcapacity is still prominent. It is difficult for industrial enterprises to improve their profits significantly. In particular, state-owned enterprises are mostly concentrated in some heavy industries and areas with overcapacity. From January to April, profits fell by 7.8% year-on-year, and the decline rate expanded by 2.1 percentage points from the previous month. At the same time, there are still uncertainties in the real estate market and the recovery of bulk commodity prices, and the profitability of industries that contributed more to industrial new profits in the early stage is not strong. However, the implementation of policies such as reducing costs and stabilizing growth in the short term will help enterprises maintain stable operating efficiency.