North China's Shanxi Province, one of the country's major coal-producing provinces, will impose an annual output ceiling of 1 billion tons over the next five years, the provincial government said on Thursday.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the provincial legislature, the government proposed a 5-year development plan to curb overall production, adjust the structure of coal products and promote the transformation of the fuel into more efficient forms.

The province will continue to boost the integration of coal resources and mergers of mining enterprises and reduce the number of coal mines to improve the sector's efficiency, it said.

Coal production in Shanxi decreased to 944 million tons in 2015 from 976 million tons in 2014. Shanxi's coal industry lost 9.43 billion yuan ($1.43 billion) in 2015 as government curbs on the polluting sector took a toll, official statistics indicated on Thursday.

The statistics showed the industry lost money every month from July 2014 to December 2015. The figures also showed that the average coal price fell 66 percent between its peak in May 2011 and December 2015, or by 431.8 yuan per ton.

The Shanxi government has controlled the growth of production in recent years in the hope of shaking off its heavy economic reliance on coal resources. The provincial government has said it won't approve any new coal mines for the next five years to tackle overcapacity. 

Besides, Shanxi plans to advance its cooperation with the provinces around and promote partnerships with other regions worldwide in a bid to realize the green development of the coal industry, the Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday.

In the past five years, Shanxi has inked strategic cooperation agreements with other 11 provinces in China and developed a partnership with the state of Virginia in the US, the report said.

The province has attracted $13.2 billion in the last five years, according to the report.