China's major firms posted a 49.5 percent growth in their profits to 829.6 billion yuan (US$102 billion) in 2004, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday.

The bureau also said these major state-owned group companies, totaling 2,764, reported a combined 12.6387 trillion yuan in their annual business revenues, up 26.3 percent year-on-year.

The group companies have combined assets of 19.4721 trillion yuan by the end of 2004, up 14.4 percent.

There was an addition of 72 major group companies at the end of last year as the restructuring of these enterprises entered, what the bureau called, a major strategic period.

The major group companies each registered 500 million yuan or more in both annual business revenues and assets last year, up 92 percent over the previous year.

According to the bureau, each of the top 30 enterprises had 100 billion yuan in assets last year, 11 more than in the previous year.

Ranked by the bureau by assets, the top 10 Chinese concerns are the State Grid Corp of China, China National Petroleum Corp, CITIC Group, Sinopec Corp, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Netcom, China Southern Power Grid Co, China Unicom and Shanghai Baosteel, the country's major steelmaker.

The top 10 firms boasted 5.2995 trillion yuan in assets in 2004, up 497.8 billion yuan over the previous year.

(Xinhua News Agency September 26, 2005)