The government of North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region abolished administrative approvals for mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by coal enterprises on July 1, and is now allowing these firms to operate by themselves in accordance with market rules, Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.

To encourage M&As among the coal enterprises, the government will not stipulate the name lists, deadlines and scales of production capacity of the coal enterprises for M&A, according to the report.

The coal output in Inner Mongolia, which holds China's largest coal reserves, reached 994.4 million tons last year, declining 6.4 percent from a year earlier, according to coalstudy.com, a Taiyuan-based coal industry portal.