GROUND WATER DEVT

closed

The Ground Water Development Project in China will provide the extension and acceleration of an ongoing project, call for the drilling and equipping of 1,150 deep wells to provide irrigation water for about 106,000 hectares of land along the western, southern and eastern coasts of Taiwan. The project also consists of the drilling and outfitting of 765 deep irrigation wells along the western and southern coasts of Taiwan. Water would be pumped into canals in the existing system operated by four Irrigation Associations and would provide irrigation, mainly supplementary, for about 84,000 hectares of land operated by more than 100,000 farmers. The additional water would enable the farmers to increase the gross value of annual agricultural production by about NT$ 610 million, which represents 130 percent of the investment. For the economy as a whole, the project would yield an annual net return equivalent to about 36 percent of the investment and, for a time, restore Taiwan to a modest rice export position.