China's 2,764 major firms registered a 49.5 percent growth in their profits of 829.6 billion yuan (102 billion US dollars) in 2004, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Saturday.

According to the figures released by the bureau on the country's group firms, these major firms also reported a total of 12.6387 trillion yuan (about 1.56 trillion US dollars) in their annual business revenues, up 26.3 percent year on year.

Those group companies have a combined asset of 19.4721 trillionyuan (some 2.4 trillion US dollars) by the end of 2004, up 14.4 percent.

Major group companies increased by 72 last year as the restructuring of China's major group companies entered what the bureau called a major strategic period.

The major group companies, totaling 2,674, each registered 500 million yuan (61 million US dollars) or more in both annual business revenues and assets last year, up 92 over the previous year.

According to a survey of those firms conducted by the bureau, 30 of the companies were listed as the top 30 as each of them has 100 billion yuan (12.3 billion US dollars) in assets last year, 11more than in the previous year.

Ranked by the bureau by assets, top 10 Chinese concerns are the State Grid Corp of China, China National Petroleum Corp, CITIC Group, Sinopec Corp., China Telecom, China Mobile, China Netcom, China Southern Power Grid Co, China Unicom and Shanghai Baosteel, the country's major steel maker.

The top 10 firms boast of 5.2995 trillion yuan (654.2 billion USdollars) in assets in 2004, up 497.8 billion yuan (61 billion US dollars) over the previous year.

The State Grid Corp of China has 1.1115 trillion yuan (137.2 billion US dollars) in assets, an increase of 59.1 billion yuan (7.2 billion US dollars) over the previous year.

Source: Xinhua