China September industrial profits up 18.4 percent year-on-year

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Profits earned by Chinese industrial firms rose 18.4 percent to 558.9 billion yuan ($91.9 billion) in September from a year earlier, slower than the annual growth of 24.2 percent in August, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday.

For the first nine months of 2013, industrial profits totaled 4.05 trillion yuan, up 13.5 percent from the same period a year earlier, the bureau said on its website. (www.stats.gov.cn)

($1 = 6.0840 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting By Gabriel Wildau; Editing by Michael Perry)