BEIJING (Reuters) - Profits earned by China's industrial firms rose 3.1 percent in March from a year earlier, slowing sharply from the pace seen early in the year, the statistics bureau said on Friday.
Profits in March rose to 589.75 billion yuan, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on its website.
In the first quarter, industrial profits climbed 11.6 percent from a year earlier to 1.55 trillion yuan, compared with growth of 16.1 percent in the first two months.
Industrial firms' liabilities in March rose 5.8 percent from a year earlier, slowing from a 6.0 percent increase in the first two months of 2018.
The data covers large enterprises with annual revenues of more than 20 million yuan from their main operations.
(Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)