NANNING, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- Icy weather in Guangxi, one of China's major winter vegetable producers, is likely to continue after the regional observatory on Monday renewed an icy-road alert.
The meteorological station of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region forecast that further cold weather will bring more sleet and icy rain from Wednesday to Friday.
Icy weather in the subtropical region has already damaged 8,310 hectares of crops and affected 95,800 people since Friday.
Maintenance workers are clearing ice off Guangxi's two major expressways to ensure the transportation of vegetables out of the region.
"More than 43 km of the expressways had been covered by up to five centimeters of ice, which was very dangerous for traffic," said Wei Changhong, deputy manager of the Guangxi Transportation Investment Group, which operates the expressways.
Guangxi supplies 8 million tonnes of vegetables to the country's snow-covered north and eastern regions every winter.
Vegetable wholesalers have reduced their purchases in Guangxi, as widespread icy weather has caused traffic to bottleneck, according to sources with the local farm produce wholesale markets.
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