China's building material sector steadily expands

BEIJING -- The output of China's building material sector has expanded by 3.1 percent for the first nine months year on year with growing profitability, official data showed.

Major building materials all reported a rise in their output. The output of commercial concrete and ceramic tile jumped by 10.1 percent and 6.3 percent respectively, while that of laminated glass went up by 5.1 percent, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The sector's total operating income surged by 14.5 percent over the same period of last year to 3.7 trillion yuan ($533.9 billion). The growth rate was 5.1 percentage points higher than the industrial average.

The sector's aggregated profits jumped by 44.8 percent year on year to 310.9 billion yuan, with a profit ratio of 8.5 percent, 2.1 percentage points higher than the industrial average.

Cement and plate glass, which used to suffer from serious oversupply, have both become more profitable with slightly increasing output. The profits of cement business rocketed by 139 percent to 109.4 billion yuan, while that of plate glass increased by 34 percent year on year to 9.1 billion yuan.

From January to September, building materials worth 117.8 billion yuan were exported, up 15 percent year on year. Ceramics export amounted to 40.8 billion yuan, the highest among all building materials for exports.