(Yicai Global) Dec. 28 -- Profits at China’s industrial companies climbed for a seventh consecutive month in November, though the pace of growth slowed due to a lower baseline a year earlier.

Profits at companies with annual revenue of more than CNY20 million (USD3 million) jumped 15.5 percent from a year earlier to CNY729.32 billion (USD111.6 billion) last month, according to data the National Bureau of Statistics released yesterday. That was less than the 28.2 percent advance logged in October.

Zhu Hong, a senior statistician at the NBS, put the deceleration in profit growth mainly down to a higher baseline a year ago.

Losses at unprofitable companies fell 46.4 percent from a year earlier, the second month in a row that the decline has been more than 45 percent, while the proportion of loss-makers among all the firms fell 1.4 percentage point from October and 17.2 percentage points from February. The NBS did not say how many had net losses.

China must still focus on supply-side structural reform and manage the demand-side to steadily spur market activity, fully tap market potential, and constantly improve the quality of the real economy, the NBS also noted.

Business accounts receivable at industrial companies rose 16.5 percent last month, 0.6 percentage point up on October, with finished product inventories climbing 7.3 percent, a 0.4 percentage point increase on October.

For the January to November period, profits at industrial companies rose 2.4 percent from a year earlier to CNY5.75 trillion (USD880.8 billion) as production and operations rebounded. That was faster than the 0.7 percent clip recorded for the first 10 months of the year.

The firms had revenue of CNY94.22 trillion from January to November, up 0.1 percent from the same period last year and the first growth this year.

Editor: Ben Armour, Xiao Yi