Poland plans costly EU-linked waste schemes
Date: 10-Feb-03
Country: POLAND
The programme will provide ample investment opportunities to local and foreign investors, help to lower Poland's high unemployment while stimulating economic growth and improve people's quality of life, the government says.
Environment Minister Stanislaw Zelichowski said his team was working hard to draft projects which would qualify for financing from the European Union's cohesion fund, which helps the bloc's poorer members improve infrastructure.
"Some projects are ready now. We must be able to tap on EU funds from day one of our accession," Zelichowski told a news conference. Poland is the biggest of the 10, mostly east European countries set to the join the EU in May, 2004.
The EU has awarded Poland about 1.8 billion euros from the cohesion fund for environment protection in 2004-2006, to which the country will have to add about 800 million euros from its own budget.
Zelichowski said that building the planned waste treatment plants until 2015, when the EU expects Poland to fully meet the bloc's pollution norms, would cost about 30 billion zlotys ($7.78 billion).
The scheme would create about 50,000 jobs if about 80 percent of works on setting up the plants was carried out, as expected, by domestic investors.
(C) Reuters Limited 2003.
