Over 45 percent of acreage for rice crops in Vietnam's northern region are encountering water shortage, local media Monday quoted a state agriculture agency.

Nearly 300,000 hectares out of over 664,000 hectares for spring rice crops in the region are facing the shortage, while most of the plants are scheduled to be grown in the coming weeks, newspaper Youth quoted the Irrigation Department under the country's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development as saying.

The water level of the Red River, the region's key river, stood at nearly 1.6 m at its section in Hanoi capital on Sunday, the lowest in the last more than 100 years, the department said.

The ministry has called on the government to instruct the local power sector to release more water from big hydropower reservoirs, and advised rice growers in areas affected by water scarcity to turn to other crops.

Vietnam has set targets of producing 38-39 million tons of paddy rice and selling overseas 4-4.2 million tons of rice this year, according to the ministry's Planning Department. It exported 200,000 tons of rice worth 50 million U.S. dollars in January, down 19.5 percent and 21.6 percent, respectively, from the same period of last year.

Vietnam exported over 5.2 million tons of rice totaling 1.4 billion dollars in 2005, posting year-on-year surges of 27.3 percent and 47.3 percent.

Source: Xinhua