The Madagascan government had managed to allocate enough money to fight against the plague of locusts, which hit south part of the Indian Ocean island country, the National Center against Locust (NCL) announced here on Friday. Presenting an assessment of locust control campaign for 2008- 2009, NCL Director Augustin Herindranovona said the Finance Act had allocated 1.8 million U. S. dollars against the plague this year. Before that, he said, NCL already had over 832,500 dollars and 312,000 dollars separately from the government. Out of the funding, only about 1.13 million dollars were used as of the beginning of this month and there was sufficient money for the next six months. Some 78,960 hectares of land in south Madagascar were affected by locusts from October 2008 to June 2009, according to the NCL assessment. In the southern region of Androy, 1,100 km south of Antananarivo, most of the farmland has been affected this year and the fight is continuing. The migratory locusts swept more than 50,000 hectares in April and May. The NCL has managed to keep the situation under control. However, Herindranovona warned, risk of infestation was high during the raining season, which begins in September, due to hatching of locusts' eggs and climate change that multiplied locusts' larvae. The NCL, which has access to global positioning system in 1996 to identify the infested areas, would also use new technologies in the next quarter to improve its effectiveness in its fight against locusts. The insect invasion was last reported in the country nearly 10 years ago, when migratory locusts descended upon almost every areas of the island country. 