Seventy percent of farmers and herdsmen in Tibet will enjoy a comfortable living standard in 2005, with per-capita net income exceeding 2,000 yuan (about 241 US dollars).
The figure represents an average growth rate of 8.5 percent annually. Cash will take up over half of the total income.
Farmers and herdsmen make up more than 80 percent of the region's population.
Last year, Tibet reported a good harvest for the 13th straight year, with grain output totaling 962,000 tons, up 4.3 percent from the previous year. The per-capita net income of rural residents rose 5.8 percent to 1,331 yuan. The added value of agriculture reached 3.63 billion yuan, up 2.1 percent.
Legqog, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government, emphasizes that the regional government will take increasing earnings of farmers and herdsmen as the starting point for all of its work in the farming and pastoral areas.
In the next five years, the government will adopt a series of measures to step up construction of Tibet's infrastructure for agriculture and animal husbandry, he said.
He noted that the government will focus on construction of facilities in the region's farming and pastoral areas. By building irrigation facilities for farmland and grasslands, it will strive to enable over 60 percent of farmland to have stable production despite natural disasters.
The region will also build 26,7000 hectares of farmland meeting high standards, rebuild 50,000 hectares of medium- or low-yield farmland, improve 1.33 million hectares of grasslands in the next five years.
One million hectares of fenced grasslands will also be added, Legqog said.
(Peopls' Daily 05/17/2001)
