The profits of China's key State-owned enterprises (SOEs) rose 18.2 percent year on year to 664.36 billion yuan (83 billion U.S. dollars) in the first nine months of this year, according to latest official data.

Statistics from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), a macroeconomic management agency under the State Council, showed that the growth rate was 4.4 percentage points higher than the first six months of this year, or 1.8 percentage points faster than the same period of last year.

NDRC said the profit growth rates of automobile, non-ferrous metal, building material, power, machine-building, oil and petrochemical and foreign trade sectors were faster than other sectors.

In January-September, NDRC data showed, business revenues of the key SOEs amounted to 748 billion yuan, an increase of 19.4 percent from the corresponding period of 2005.
NDRC attributed the faster profit growth of the key SOEs to decreasing production cost thanks to the fall of resource products prices in the upper stream.

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