The Chinese Ministry of Finance (MOF) said on Wednesday that it has allocated subsidies worth 10 billion yuan (1.52 billion U.S. dollars) to help farmers renovate their dilapidated homes this year.

The subsidies, which were handed down by the central government, will cover rural households in all counties in the central and western regions under a national pilot program for renovating unsafe houses in rural areas, the MOF said in a statement on its website.

Each eligible rural household will receive a subsidy of 6,000 yuan from the central government, MOF said.

Furthermore, poor rural families living near land border areas, and rural model households that meet building energy efficiency requirements in the northeast, northwest and northern regions, as well as Tibet Autonomous Region, will receive an extra allowance of 2,000 yuan per household from the central government, it said.

The MOF requested provincial-level governments in the central and western regions to determine their own subsidies for the rural housing program according to local economic criteria.

Under the pilot program, which started in the poverty-stricken southwestern province of Guizhou in 2008, the Chinese central government has earmarked 11.7 billion yuan of subsidies to help about 2.04 million rural households build new homes over the past three years.

China's national poverty line was set at 1,196 yuan per capita net income a year in 2009, which is comparable to the United Nations' measure of living that is at less than 1.25 U.S. dollars per day.