China will form over five world-class advanced raw material manufacturing clusters and five to ten leading industrial companies with core competitiveness during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), according to a plan on developing the country's raw materials industry released on Wednesday.

The plan, issued jointly by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and two other government bodies, outlined the development goals for the sector in the coming 5 to 15 years. 

By 2025, a new development pattern for China's raw materials sector that features higher quality, better profitability and distribution, low carbon and more security will take shape, said the plan.  

The sector will become a highland for the research and development, production, and application of the world's vital raw materials by 2035, the plan said.

It also called for efforts to promote a digital and green shift in the raw materials sector. The production capacity for such bulk commodities as crude steel and cement should not increase, with the industrial-capacity utilization rate kept at a reasonable level.

The raw materials sector, including steel, nonferrous metals, building materials and new materials sub-sectors, has long served as the bedrock for the real economy.

Official data showed the industrial output of China's raw materials sector in 2020 accounted for 27.4 percent of all sectors.

(With input from Xinhua)