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HO CHI MINH CITY, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam had 265,500 households which suffered from food shortages in 2016, up 16.7 percent from 2015, the country's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said Monday.
Specifically, nearly 1.1 million local people suffered from food shortages last year, up 16.4 percent.
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.
Last year, Vietnam's relevant sectors and localities offered hungry households 19,400 tons of food and some cash.
By the end of 2016, Vietnam had reduced its poor household rate to about 6 percent, said the country's General Statistics Office.
The rate will be around 10 percent if new criteria to define poor households, set for the 2016-2020 period, are applied. Enditem
