BEIJING - China's petroleum and chemical industry has generated some 712.1 billion yuan in total profit over the first nine months, up 45.2 percent from the same period of last year, official data showed.

The figure took up 14.3 percent of the total profits generated by domestic industrial enterprises that each has an annual main operation income of more than 20 million yuan, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

With a total asset of 12.75 trillion yuan, up 6.1 percent over the same period last year, the sector has seen its asset-liability ratio fall by 1.16 percentage points to 54.19 percent.

The sector's profit rate climbed up by 1.56 percentage points to 7.43 percent, thanks to the solid improvement in the operation efficiency of petroleum and natural gas exploration business as well as the good development momentum in oil refining and chemical industry.

The overall prices of petroleum and natural gas surged by 24.6 percent during the January-September period, while those for chemical raw materials and chemical products jumped by 7.2 percent.

The industry's total exports during the same period went up by 22.8 percent to 521.66 billion yuan. The growth rate was 8.6 percentage points higher than the same period of last year.

Fixed assets investment in chemical raw materials and chemical manufacturing rose by 1.7 percent, the first increase since the end of January but lower than the 5.4-percent national average growth for industrial investment, according to the figures of the National Bureau of Statistics.