China is preparing policies for carrying out mergers and acquisitions in eight key sectors including steel, automobile, rare earths and medicine, domestic media said on Monday.

China National Radio cited source with the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planning body, as saying that this year and the next year are the key periods for the M&As in these sectors, and the State Council has recently told nine ministerial bodies, including the NDRC and the Ministry of Finance, to draft up specified policies for advancing the project.

State-owned enterprises will receive more efforts in M&As. CNR added in the report that the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission will make "great" efforts to resolve problems, including unclear development strategy, low efficiency after M&As, and low capability in cross border M&As in State-owned enterprises.