BEIJING, March 28 (Xinhua) -- The following are the highlights of China's business news from the past week:
LOAN PRIME RATES
China's one-year loan prime rate (LPR), a market-based benchmark lending rate, came in at 3.85 percent on Monday, unchanged from the previous month.
The over-five-year LPR, on which many lenders base their mortgage rates, also remained unchanged from the previous reading of 4.65 percent, according to the National Interbank Funding Center.
According to analysts, the lending rates have remained steady for 11 consecutive months, matching market expectations.
CURRENT-ACCOUNT
China saw a current-account surplus of 274 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 as the economy recovered amid effective epidemic control, official data showed Friday.
Trade in goods posted a surplus of 515 billion dollars, while trade in services saw a deficit of 145.3 billion dollars, according to data released by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.
The capital and financial account recorded a deficit of 105.8 billion dollars.
INDUSTRIAL PROFITS
Profits of China's major industrial firms saw accelerated growth in the first two months of this year as the economy further firms up from the COVID-19-induced woes, official data showed Saturday.
Industrial firms with an annual business turnover of at least 20 million yuan (about 3.06 million U.S. dollars) saw their combined profits surge 179 percent year on year during the Jan.-Feb. period to 1.11 trillion yuan, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.
When compared with the first two months of 2019, the figure represented a rise of 72.1 percent. The average growth rate in the past two years stood at 31.2 percent, NBS data showed. Enditem
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