Poland’s government will spend heavily to develop eco-friendly transport nationwide over the next decade, a deputy prime minister has declared.

Deputy Prime Minister and Science and Higher Education Minister Jarosław Gowin speaks during a media briefing in Warsaw on Friday. Photo: PAP/Leszek Szymański

"We are launching a Low-Emission Transport Fund that will be endowed with close to PLN 5 billion (EUR 1.2 billion, USD 1.44 billion) in government funds by 2027," Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Gowin, who is also minister for science and higher education, said on Friday.

Meanwhile, Deputy Development Minister Jadwiga Emilewicz told reporters that 1,000 electric buses would ply the streets of Polish cities by 2020.

Poland's new Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has declared that tackling air pollution, which is estimated to kill some 50,000 people a year in the country, will be one of his government’s priorities.

In a broad-ranging policy speech in parliament outlining his Cabinet’s priorities, Morawiecki said earlier this month: “Clean air is a measure of a society’s level of development, a measure of whether or not Poland is truly a mature country.”

On Thursday, the Polish government adopted a bill to ease rules for electric cars and facilitate work to build infrastructure for “green” vehicles.

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Source: PAP, IAR