China's State-owned enterprises (SOEs) saw their total profits drop 5.7 percent year-on-year to 704.1 billion yuan ($115 billion) in the first four months of 2015, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement on Monday.
The profits decline was mainly caused by three State-owned oil giants and SOEs in the coal, steel, and nonferrous metal sectors that were struggling with excess capacity, while firms in the transport, electronics and power generation sectors saw strong increases in profits, according to the statement.
However, the pace of decline has narrowed from a year-on-year drop of 8 percent in the first quarter of this year, thanks to a batch of measures rolled out by the State Council to stabilize growth, the statement said.
