HO CHI MINH CITY, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam reported 73,100 households which suffered from food shortages in the first two months of this year, down 21.2 percent against the same period last year.
Specifically, 298,700 local people suffered from food shortages between January and February, down 20.5 percent, the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said on Wednesday.
In the two-month period, Vietnam's relevant sectors and localities offered hungry households 5,300 tons of food and some 1.1 billion Vietnamese dong (49,000 U.S. dollars).
The country had 265,500 households which suffered from food shortages in 2016, up 16.7 percent from 2015. The between-crop hunger surge was attributed to floods nationwide, prolonged serious drought and saltwater encroachment in the Central Highlands region and the southern Mekong Delta, said the ministry.
By the end of last year, Vietnam had reduced its poor household rate to about 10 percent according to new criteria to define poor households set for the 2016-2020 period, said the country's General Statistics Office.
