(Adds flood toll in northern Vietnam paragraphs 3-5)

By Ho Binh Minh

HANOI, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Vietnam will spend nearly 2.4 trillion dong ($145 million) between now and 2010 to build dykes and relocate thousands of rice farmers because of heavy seasonal flooding in its fertile Mekong river delta.

The programme, approved early this week, would help 33,000 families resettle in areas away from landslides and floods, the government said in a statement.

Meanwhile, flash floods triggered by heavy rain on Wednesday night killed at least five people and five others were missing in the northernmost province of Ha Giang, bordering China, the provincial authorities said in a disaster report on Thursday.

Three siblings aged from 1 year to 4 years were swept away in Ha Giang's remote district of Hoang Su Phi, the report said.

The flood-hit area lies about 1,400 km (870 miles) north of Vietnam's coffee belt in the Central Highlands. Ha Giang is also outside Vietnam's main rice growing regions, namely the Red River Delta in the north and the Mekong Delta in the country's south. About 20 percent of Vietnam's 86.5 million people live in the Cuu Long River Delta, the Vietnamese name for the Mekong river, which produces more than half of the country's paddy output and supplies more than 90 percent of its commercial rice.

Funding for the programme will come from the state budget, grants and soft loans from state-run Vietnam Development Bank. The funds would be used for building dykes as well as foundations for new villages to ensure farmers' homes stay above the Mekong floods' peak level in 2000, the statement said. Floods arrive between August and November each year in the Mekong delta, a large area of fertile soil in southern Vietnam where the Mekong river reaches the South China Sea after travelling more than 4,000 km (2,500 miles) from Tibet.

In 2000, the Mekong delta experienced the worst floods in four decades as waters rose to more than 5 metres, killing nearly 500 people, more than 300 of them children.

Early this month, the governments of Vietnam and Cambodia said rising Mekong water levels may cause landslides and heavy flooding, but the seasonal floodwaters would also bring Vietnam's southern farmers good crops of rice and fish [ID:nHAN232863]. ($1=16,496 dong) (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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