Vietnam Central Highlands Province Incurs $49M Losses from Drought

The ongoing severe drought has caused damaged of over VND1.11 trillion ($49 million) for Vietnam’s Central Highlands province of Dak Lak, state media has reported. The drought has severely affected 36,961 hectares of crop and livelihood of 21,000 households, media said. As many as 2,000 ha of coffee in Cu M’gar were totally destroyed. The province has 600 water reservoirs, and half of them have water level under critical level. Dak Lak is the biggest coffee producer in the Central Highlands which cultivates over 95% of coffee in the Southeast Asian nation. The province has other cash crops such as pepper, rubber and cashew. (toquoc.gov.vn Apr 6)