The People's Daily says today that central state-owned enterprises (SOE) keep momentum of much better performance this year, quoting Li Rongrong, director of SASAC (Sate-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission), that central SOEs are expected to register 6.5 trillion yuan of sales revenue, up 17 percent over last year and 80 percent over 2002 when the SASAC was not in place. Given this, their profits will reach 590 billion yuan, increasing by 21 percent over the last year and 1.5 times as much as that before the SASAC was established.

Li said the 169 state firms had achieved 4.84 trillion yuan of sales revenue for the first nine months of the year, a year-on-year rise of 23.4 percent, which represented 463.79 billion yuan of profits, rising 22.4 percent.

Power, coal, petroleum and petrochemical sectors enjoyed good profitability particularly. The 15 major power generators made 38.94 billion yuan of profits over the first three quarters of the year, up 10.7 percent year on year.

The major 32 state-owned coal producers saw their profits surge 84.9 percent over the same period of last year to 27.66 billion yuan. And the three leading oil and petrochemical giants generated a total of 182.93 billion yuan, jumping 29.7 percent.

The SASAC will further improve the corporate governance of the state firms so that the state assets, under its custody, will keep and add value.

By People's Daily Online