CGTN.com reports that data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that China's industrial profits soared 137 percent year on year during the January-March period to about 1.83 trillion yuan ($281.3 billion), as demand for raw materials surged along with the continued economic recovery. 

In March, profits of China's major industrial firms rose to 711.18 billion yuan with an increase of 92.3 percent from the same period a year earlier, when the economy was hit hard by the COVID-19 epidemic. Major industrial firms in the country refer to those that have an annual business turnover of at least 20 million yuan from their main operations. 

The sharp growth of industrial profits in the first quarter was mainly driven by skyrocketing profits generated in raw material manufacturing sector, according to Zhu Hong, a senior statistician from the NBS.

As prices for bulk commodities climbed and demand picked up, margins in raw material manufacturing industry saw a year-on-year growth rate of 434 percent, contributing to 51.5 percentage points of the overall industrial profit growth in the first quarter.

Among the 41 industrial sectors under the NBS measurement, 39 sectors saw at least double-digit growth in terms of profits for the first three months, and 16 sectors encountered a 100-percent uptrend in profits.