BEIJING — China's top State-asset regulator has urged the country's centrally-administered State-owned enterprises (SOEs) to increase profitability and deepen reform.

Addressing a recent video conference attended by the heads of central SOEs, Hao Peng, chief of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), said most of the central SOEs should strive to achieve relatively rapid growth in the second half of the year.

Efforts should be made to deepen reform, optimize and stabilize industrial and supply chains, and defuse major risks, according to the conference.

A three-year action plan for SOEs reform is expected to take the country's reform in State-owned assets and firms to a new stage.

In the first half of the year, central SOEs led in work and production resumption, drove the development of all types of market entities and improved production and operation, according to the SASAC.

In the January-June period, the combined revenue of the 97 central SOEs fell by 7.8 percent from one year earlier to 13.4 trillion yuan (about $1.91 trillion), narrowing by 4 percentage points compared with the decrease in the first quarter.

The central SOEs' combined profits stood at 438.55 billion yuan in the first half of the year, down 37.7 percent year-on-year, narrowing by 12.6 percentage points compared with the decline in the first five months.