BEIJING - Chinese industrial businesses reported higher profits in the first four months from a year earlier, but the growth rate was down slightly from that of the first three months.

Chinese industrial businesses saw their profits rise by 10 percent year on year in the first four months of 2014, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement on Wednesday.

Total profits of industrial companies with annual business revenue of more than 20 million yuan ($3.2 million) reached 1.76 trillion yuan from January to April.

Profit growth was 0.1 percentage point lower than that in the first three months.

The slight slowdown was caused by industrial business performance in April, when industrial firms raked in 468.63 billion yuan in profits, up 9.6 percent year on year, but the growth rate was down 1.1 percentage points from March.

In the first four months, profits of private firms rose the most by 13.8 percent year on year to 571.76 billion yuan.

State-owned and state-holding industrial enterprises reached 471.6 billion yuan in profits, up 2.6 percent year on year.

Combined profits of foreign-funded enterprises and companies with funds from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan stood at 422.3 billion yuan in the first four months, up 12.7 percent year on year.

Joint-stock enterprises took in total profits of 1.04 trillion yuan in the first four months, up 9.1 percent year on year.

By sector, industrial enterprises in the mining industry reached profits of 221.29 billion yuan in the first four months, down 16 percent year on year.

Companies in the manufacturing sector saw 14 percent year-on-year growth to hit 1.40 trillion yuan in the period.

Of the total 41 industrial sectors, 30 rose, one was flat and ten dropped in the first four months from the same period last year.