Efforts to address oversupply, safety and other issues that the coal sector faces have yielded positive results, a senior official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's top economic planner, said Thursday.

Declines in coal output and imports have eased the oversupply pressure on the industry "to a certain degree," Lian Weiliang, deputy head of the NDRC, told a conference on the coal industry, according to a statement on the agency's website Thursday.

In the first 10 months of the year, domestic coal output declined by 3.6 percent to 3.05 billion tons while imports fell 30 percent to 170 million tons, both on a year-on-year basis, Lian said.

Safety conditions in the coal industry are also improving, with four "serious accidents" and 66 deaths related to the coal industry in the first 11 months of the year, down 69 percent and 68 percent year-on-year, respectively, Lian added.

However, oversupply persists as demand continues to decline while inventories remain high, and falling prices are exacerbating producers' woes, said Lian.