BEIJING, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- China's rubber industry saw strong growth in profits in the first 10 months of this year, according to new data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

In the January-October period, the total profits of 373 tracked companies rose 31.14 percent year on year to 13.07 billion yuan (about 1.9 billion U.S. dollars), the ministry said in a statement.

"The industry's profitability was better than the same period of last year," the statement said.

Total output of the industry rose 6.31 percent to 283.13 billion yuan, while sales revenue rose 6.12 percent to 281.62 billion yuan.

In the same period, major tyre manufacturers saw output rise 1.83 percent and profits grow by 41.9 percent, the statement noted.

Since the latter half of 2017, many tyre makers have announced price hikes, citing higher costs due to rises in raw material prices.