Wen was talking while visiting two of China's worst-hit regions, Northeast China's Liaoning Province and Jilin Province, between Friday and yesterday.

In regions with a severe lack of water resources, more funds should be poured in, Wen said. Local governments should also extend supplies of relief grain to the dry areas.

Wen, a member of the Political Bureau of China's Communist Party Central Committee and the head of the National Headquarters for Fighting against Floods and Droughts, called on disaster areas to increase incomes for farmers.

The export of labor services might be an efficient way, Wen suggested.

The vice-premier promised that those farmers who had suffered a great deal of loss and had difficulties feeding themselves would be exempt from paying some taxes.

Over the past three months, drought has struck more than 20 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.

Locusts have appeared in large numbers in many places, as a result posing a serious threat to the country's agriculture.

Wen also urged measures to be taken to bring locusts under control.

Drought is affecting over 23 million hectares of non-irrigated farmland in Liaoning, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shaanxi, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and some other provinces.

Earlier this month, the State Council held a working conference on the subject in Jinan, the capital of East China's Shandong Province.

Between Wednesday and Friday many parts of North China received rain, which had helped to alleviate drought conditions in Liaoning, Hebei and Shandong provinces and the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin, the Central Meteorological Observatory said.

Altogether, 8.9 million hectares of land had not produced a harvest at all.

(China Daily 06/18/2001)