Photo: a cement factory in Henan, China. (Xinhua Video)
BEIJING, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- China's cement sector reported slight growth in output in July, reflecting the country's economic recovery, official data showed.
The country's cement output stood at 220 million tonnes in July, up 3.6 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
In the first seven months of this year, the domestic cement output fell 3.5 percent year on year to 1.22 billion tonnes, narrowing by 20.4 percentage points and 1.3 percentage points from the drop in the first quarter and the first half, respectively.
MIIT data showed that the sector's total operating revenue declined 5.5 percent from a year earlier to 510.9 billion yuan (about 74.8 billion U.S. dollars) in the January-July period, 0.6 percentage points lower than that in the first half, due to COVID-19 epidemic.
Its combined profit stood at 92.6 billion yuan in the first seven months of this year, falling 6.1 percent from the same period last year.
The ex-factory cement prices in the first seven months averaged at 404.4 yuan per tonne, a year-on-year decrease of 2.4 percent, still at a high level.
The cement clinker imports witnessed an increase in volume and decline in average prices. In the first seven months, the imports totaled 16.44 million tonnes, up 51 percent year on year, while the average FOB prices for imports stood at 21 U.S. dollars per tonne, down 15 percent year on year.
(Edited by Li Shimeng, Hu Pingchao with Xinhua Silk Road, lishimeng@xinhua.org, hupingchao@xinhua.org)
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