The southern Chinese sugar-producing region of Guangxi is suffering from a prolonged drought which has left almost a quarter of a million people without enough drinking water, state media said on Saturday. Mountainous areas in the west and north-west of Guangxi, which shares a border with Vietnam, have not had sufficient rainfall since last August, the official Xinhua news agency cited local authorities as saying.

At least 240,000 people and 110,000 head of cattle do not have sufficient drinking water, the report said. "Local governments have been sending water trucks to those villages that suffer severe shortages," it quoted a relief official as saying.

"We are organising local residents to dig wells and divert water from elsewhere to the drought-hit areas," he added. Traders told Reuters in December that they estimated sugar output in Guangxi, the country's largest sugar producing area, would fall by about 300,000 tonnes from 2008's 7.63 million tonnes. Guangxi produces 60 percent of China's sugar output, which totalled 12.43 million tonnes in 2008.

Copyright Reuters, 2010