Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region would provide 1.15 million rural residents with reliable drinking water this year, a senior local water resources official said on Monday.

About 940 million yuan (US$137.63 million) was allocated for water projects for 2008-2009, including 720 million yuan from the central government, said Zhao Leshi, deputy head of the regional water resources bureau.

Spending totaled nearly 300 million yuan last year, when Xinjiang built 116 drinking water projects and 59 water supply facilities and laid 5,085 kilometers of pipes. These projects provided safe drinking water to 643,400 local people for the first time, Zhao said.

Xinjiang is an arid region, where the scant water supplies vary widely by location and season. Unclean drinking water caused an outbreak of pandemic disease in the late 1980s in the region.

Over the past decade, the region has brought potable water to 6.9 million people, or 59 percent of the population.

In the five-year period ending in 2010, Xinjiang planned to provide 3.19 million rural people with reliable drinking water, Zhao said.

According to the Ministry of Water Resources, China spent 61.8 billion yuan to provide 160 million rural people with clean water between 2000 and 2008.

(Xinhua News Agency March 9, 2009)