China's central SOEs report strong profit growth in 2018

China's centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) saw strong revenue and profit growth in 2018, official data showed Tuesday.

Despite rising economic uncertainty, central SOEs reported profits of 1.7 trillion yuan (251.7 billion U.S. dollars) last year, up 16.7 percent year on year, Xiao Yaqing, head of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, said at a meeting.

Meanwhile, combined revenues of the country's 96 centrally-administered SOEs increased 10.1 percent year on year to 29.1 trillion yuan, according to Xiao.

Industrial companies, with net profits surging 21.3 percent, contributed 67.4 percent of the total net profit growth of the central SOEs.

In 2018, the debt-to-asset ratio of China's central SOEs stood at 65.7 percent, 0.6 percentage points down from a year earlier.