The Water Resource Dept of the Inner Mongolia region reports that it is going to speed up work on systems for 22 major water conservation projects to increase the region's water security and plan to spend 120 billion yuan ($18.36 billion) on water conservation during the 13th Five-year Plan (2016-20).

The regional government says there will be large water conservation projects this year, with more than 20 billion yuan. The fund will sponsor construction work, as well as flood control and drought relief, better water delivery for farming, water saving irrigation on more than 200,000 hectares, water conservation reforms in key areas. The projects slso include focusing on soil and water resources to completely control soil and water loss on almost 440,000 hectares, and better water resource management.