South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region will appropriate around 200 million yuan (US$24.7 million) in small irrigation projects in an effort to counteract drought.

The region will also seek financial support from the Chinese central government to improve its big and medium-sized irrigation facilities.

The measures will help to irrigate more arid cultivated land and to improve water utilization efficiency in the coming five years, said an official at the regional water resources working meeting last Friday.

Following three consecutive years of drought, the region continues to be hit by a massive spring dry spells as rainfall decreases.

The reservoirs in Guangxi hold 2.8 billion cubic meters of water, 28.2 percent of their storage capacity, by late January, far from its minimum demand of 4 billion cubic meters, said Wei Lixing, director of the Regional Meteorology Bureau.

Statistics from the Guangxi regional water resources bureau indicate that 1.04 million hectares of cultivated land, or 41 percent of the total, lack irrigation, and among them, about 953,330 hectares are without any irrigation facilities.

Two thirds of the 1.52 million hectares with water conservancy projects are irrigated in old, traditional ways, with the average utilization rate as low as 42 percent.

Guangxi also pledges to provide 5 million farmers with access to safe drinking water in the next five years, thus cutting one third of the population's drinking unsafe water.

(Xinhua News Agency February 14, 2006)