Large Chinese industrial businesses saw their profits increase by 3.3 percent year-on-year in 2014, despite an 8-percent plunge in December, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics announced on Tuesday.

The total profits of companies with annual revenue of over 20 million yuan (US$3.2 million) reached 6.47 trillion yuan last year, up 3.3-percent from 2013 but much slower than the 12.2 percent recorded a year earlier.

In December alone, profits for these companies slipped by 8 percent to 850.7 billion yuan from a year ago, the biggest drop since October 2011.

He Ping, an analyst with the statistics bureau, said large industrial businesses in China “remain stable”, as they still reported annual growth in profits despite December’s drop.

Profits of industrial enterprises producing consumer goods expanded by 5 percent in 2014 whereas profits of those in the mining sector slumped by 23 percent, Mr He said in a statement accompanying the data. He added that the data suggest that the growth momentum had shifted from “investment-driven” to “consumption-driven”.