Controversial highway plans

9th April 2010

New figures show that spending on highway construction was 20 percent lower than planned last year due to budget pressures. This year, the government is adopting a controversial strategy to continue keeping these costs down - hiring a Chinese contractor.

The original 2009 budget for building highways and express roads of PLN 32 bln was cut back twice, dropping to PLN 22.7 bln. By year’s end, however, only 80 percent of that, or PLN 18.4 bln, had been spent. These spending statistics were released on Thursday by the parliamentary infrastructure committee in its report on the progress of road building ahead of the Euro 2012 football championships.

The report showed that it will be hard ...