Shanghai Port Profit Falls; First Drop in Four Years

Shanghai International Port Group Co Ltd, the operator of the world's busiest container port, posted a 4 percent fall in its 2015 preliminary net profit, marking the first decline since 2011 as China's economy slows.

Shanghai Port, whose container throughput totalled 36.5 million TEU (twenty-foot-equivalent units) in 2015, reported a preliminary net profit of 6.5 billion yuan ($989.35 million) in 2015, down from 6.8 billion yuan a year earlier, it said in an exchange filing on Monday.

The port is expected to post its final annual results with outlook comments in March. The last time it logged a profit fall was in 2011, when net profit was down 12.8 percent, according company data posted on Eikon.

China, the world's second largest economy, will face great difficulty in achieving economic growth above 6.5 percent over the 2016-2020 period due to slowing global demand and rising labour costs at home, the China Securities Journal quoted top state adviser Li Wei as saying on Monday.

Reporting by Lee Chyen Yee and Twinnie Siu