China's industrial enterprises earned 864.3 billion yuan (about 107 billion US dollars) in profit in the first eight months of this year, up 20.7 percent from the same 2004 period, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday.

The NBS, meanwhile, said the industrial enterprises, which include all state-owned firms and the non-state-owned enterprises with annual sales income more than 5 million yuan (602,410 US dollars), suffered losses of 137.3 billion yuan in the January-August period, representing a 53.1 percent year-on-year increase.

The state-owned industrial enterprises and the share-holding enterprises under the State control suffered losses totaling 69.7 billion yuan, an increase of 82.7 percent over the corresponding period of 2004, according to statistics.

The NBS also said the industrial enterprises' sales income amounted to 15 trillion yuan in the period, up 27.7 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Of China's 39 major industries, the profits of the coal, oil, ferrous and nonferrous metal ore mining and nonmetals mineral mining rose by 80.4 percent, 76.4 percent, 47.9 percent, 128.5 percent, 80.7 percent respectively in the first eight months.

The NBS also noted that the profits of the transportation equipment manufacturing, building materials, telecommunications sectors fell by 35.4 percent, 14.8 percent and 6.5 percent respectively in the period.

The industrial enterprises in the petroleum refining and coking sectors reported an economic losses of 8 billion yuan in the January-August period.

Source: Xinhua