BEIJING, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Vice Premier Wang Yang on Friday urged the National Afforestation Committee to increase afforestation and green industries to underpin China's sustainable and healthy development.

In the next five years, China should do more to add green resources, strengthen ecological restoration and deepen collective forest right system reform, Wang said.

Green development is one of the five cornerstones of the country's new development philosophy for the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020) along with innovation, coordination, opening up and sharing.

China's forest coverage ratio had expanded by 1.3 percentage points as of 2015 when compared with five years ago. Meanwhile, the volume of growing stock had surged 10.3 percent.