Local governments should step up efforts to ensure market supplies in the drought-stricken southwestern areas, China's Ministry of Commerce said Monday.

Local authorities in drought-hit provincial localities should enhance their awareness of the importance to ensure market supplies of daily necessity and production material for local residents, and beef up market supply supervision, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

The first priority in these areas is to help drought victims and livestock to get access to drinking water. Local governments must work out effective drought-relief emergency plans, Fang Aiqing, China's assistant commerce minister, said in the statement.

Since last autumn, the southwest Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Chongqing Municipality, were hit by a lingering drought, the worst one in decades.