The total profits earned by ­China's State-owned ­enterprises (SOEs) reached 2.4 trillion yuan ($396.72 billion) in 2013, up 5.9 percent from a year earlier, data from the Ministry of ­Finance (MOF) showed Tuesday.

Centrally administered SOEs, referring to 113 firms under the administration of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, contributed nearly 70 percent of the total profits generated by SOEs, leaving the rest to local SOEs, the ministry said in a statement posted on its website.

SOEs in the transportation, electronic, auto and real estate industries realized significant year-on-year profit growth last year, while those in the coal, chemical, machinery and nonferrous metal sectors posted large annual profit decreases during the period, according to the MOF.

The total business revenue of SOEs climbed 10.1 percent year-on-year to 46.47 trillion yuan in 2013, the statement said.

China's SOEs have long been criticized for their low efficiency and receiving too many favors from the government, Ding Yifan, deputy director of the Institute of World Development under the State Council's Development Research Center, told the Xinhua News Agency on January 5.

The target of the SOE reform is to build a modern corporate system, and diverse ownership is in essence a modern corporate system, Chen Xian, a business professor from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was quoted by Xinhua as saying in the same report.