BEIJING, April 28 (Xinhua) -- The following are the highlights of China's key business news from the past week:

INDUSTRIAL PROFIT

The profits of China's major industrial firms surged by 13.9 percent in March, a drastic rebound compared to the 14-percent decline in January-February period, official data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Saturday.

Production and sales of these firms picked up in March, with the aggregated industrial value added expanding 8.5 percent year on year, 3.2 percentage points higher than in the January-February period.

Operation revenue jumped by 13.7 percent year on year in March, 10.4 percentage points more than that in the January-February period.

SOEs PROFIT

Profits of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) maintained stable growth in the first quarter of 2019, official data showed Tuesday.

The combined profits of SOEs rose 15.6 percent year on year to 819.77 billion yuan (about 122 billion U.S. dollars) for the January-March period, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said.

SOEs generated a revenue of almost 14 trillion yuan during the period, up 8.9 percent from a year earlier, and operating costs increased 9.2 percent to 13.52 trillion yuan.

SERVICE TRADE DEFICIT

China continued to report a deficit in foreign service trade in March, official data showed Friday.

The deficit stood at 20.5 billion U.S. dollars last month, slightly down from 20.6 billion dollars in February, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said.

In contrast to merchandise trade, trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products such as transport, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, computing and accounting.

NEV OUTPUT

China's new energy vehicle (NEV) output is likely to exceed 1.5 million in 2019, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

During the first quarter, China's NEV production and sales amounted to 304,000 and 299,000 vehicles respectively, up 102.7 percent and 109.7 percent.

GOLD CONSUMPTION

China's gold consumption edged up 0.69 percent year on year to 286.93 tonnes in the first quarter of this year due to strong domestic demand, according to the China Gold Association.

Consumption of gold jewelry reached 188.05 tonnes, up 4.18 percent from the same period last year, while gold bars dropped 4.42 percent to 70.04 tonnes.