The Ministry of Sport will spend PLN 315m on strategic investments in 2009, including PLN 315m on new projects, said in the Sejm this Thursday Vice-Minister of Sport, Tomasz Półgrabski. Półgrabski replied to questions from Civic Platform’s MPs on this year’s investment plan of the Ministry of Sport.

“As regards strategic investments in 2009, we appropriated PLN 315m for such projects, including PLN 180m of contractual liabilities, namely continued tasks, and PLN 135m for new strategic investments approved this week, investments which need to be accelerated”, the Vice-Minister said.

“In 2009, we assigned PLN 200m for field investments, namely voivodship bases. Having estimated the cash within the fund (of the physical education development - PAP), we decided to add PLN 24m to increase the limit of voivodship programmes for development of the sports base”, he added.

Półgrabski said that the Ministry of Sport and Tourism had been pursuing the investment policy adopted in 2007 entitled ‘The strategy of sport development in Poland by 2015’. The strategy mainly covers projects of particular sports importance, such as expansion and repairs  of main sports centres, i.e. the base for Olympic training and the national teams.

“The second programme is the programme of supporting voivodship long-term programmes for development of the sports base, My Pitch 2012 programme, namely the programme of building multi-purpose pitches for children and the youth, and the Pitch Nearby programme, for which the Ministry of Sport and Tourism is currently preparing new assumptions for 2009”, he added.

He explained that as regards the programme of voivodship investments, the funds awarded by the Ministry of Sport are divided by the local government assembly. “We usually finance facilities such as swimming pools, gymnasia, sports venues or recreational centres”, said Półgrabski.