China's industrial profit growth cools in Oct

BEIJING, Nov 28 (Reuters): Profit growth at China's industrial firms slumped for a sixth straight month in October as demand cooled further amid mounting uncertainties stemming from the US-China trade war.

China and the United States have slapped tariffs on billions of dollars of each other's goods, hurting manufacturing and casting a shadow on the outlook for global growth.

Industrial profits rose 3.6 per cent in October from a year earlier, slowing from September's 4.1 per cent gain, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday.

Total profits for last month were 548 billion yuan, it said.

The expansion was the slowest since March as the world's second-largest economy braced for weaker growth thanks to the trade war plus efforts to rein in financial risks and tackle pollution problems.

The slowdown in earnings was largely due to cooling factory-gate inflation and a high-base effect, statistics bureau official He Ping said in a statement.

Profit growth for China's industrial firms has been weakening from last year's strong performance as factory-gate inflation continued to ease on sluggish demand, despite a surprising rebound in industrial output in October.