Shanghai (ZXZC)- The National Bureau of Statistics revealed that Chinese auto manufacturing industry gained net profit of RMB 335.99 billion during the first half of 2018, representing a year-on-year growth of 4.9%, up 4.4 percentage point compared with the first five months.

During the first six months, the net profit of auto manufacturing industry from January to February reached RMB 91.73 billion, down 1.8% from the comparable period in the prior year. Net profit in March totaled RMB 58.78 billion, slumping 15.4% from a year ago. Due to the drastic drop in March, net profit in the first quarter suffered a year-on-year drop of 4.7% to RMB 150.51 billion.

Chinese auto manufacturing industry still saw a slight year-on-year net profit drop of 0.6% during the first four months to RMB 204.8 billion. During the first five months, net profit of auto manufacturing industry reached RMB 263.9 billion, edging up 0.5% over the previous year.

Vehicle sales growth, reduction of revenue cost, price changes of vehicles and the contribution from major automakers are the major factors that drove the net profit growth of Chinese auto manufacturing industry in the first half of 2018.

Apart from the growth of net profit in auto manufacturing industry, the investment of auto manufacturing industry also saw 8.5% growth on an annual basis, up 1.7 percentage point from a year ago. Moreover, new energy vehicle experienced rapid sales growth in the first half of 2018 with total deliveries reaching 412,000 units, soaring 111.5% over the previous year. The vehicle import and export amount also kept robust growth momentum from January to June.