BEIJING -- Profits for major Chinese industrial firms continued to fall in August weighed down by sapping markets both at home and abroad, official data showed Thursday.

Profits for major industrial companies, or those with annual revenues of more than 20 million yuan ($3.15 million), fell 6.2 percent year-on-year to 381.2 billion yuan in August, marking a decline for the fifth straight month, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement.

The figure also represented the largest decrease among the past five months.

In the first eight months, profits for industrial firms fell 3.1 percent from a year earlier to 3.06 trillion yuan, 0.4 percentage points greater than the decrease for the first seven months.