LHASA - Southwest China's Tibet autonomous region will plant more forests in the next few years, the regional department of forestry said Friday.

The region's average annual expansion forest cover is scheduled to surpass 60,000 hectares by 2020.

A total of 55,000 hectares of forests were planted in 2016, more than 3,000 hectares of which were under a program to return farmland to forest, according to Tsultrim Gyatso, secretary of the department party committee.

The region also created 93,000 hectares in 2016 to combat desertification.

Tibet is striving to attain 15 square meters of urban green area per capita by 2020.

The region spent close to 4 billion yuan ($580 million) in creating around 350,000 hectares of new forests from 2011 to 2015.