The Polish government will spend PLN 524 billion, or USD 133 billion, to upgrade the country’s military from 2021 to 2035, under the new Armed Forces Modernisation Plan approved by Mariusz Błaszczak on Thursday.
In 2025, expenditure on modernising Poland’s armed forces and providing them with new equipment will come to PLN 24 billion, rising to PLN 50 billion in 2035, Błaszczak said as he signed the new guidelines into effect during a ceremony in Warsaw.
Błaszczak told reporters that “security has no price” and that the new plan ensured “a record budget” to bring the country’s armed forces in line with “21st-century standards.”
He argued that over the past four years the conservative government in which he is a minister has done more than any previous Polish administration to modernise the country’s armed forces.
The US Congress last month cleared the sale of 32 F-35 fighter jets to Poland, for an estimated cost of USD 6.5 billion, in an expected deal that Błaszczak has hailed as "the most important contract in the history of the Polish armed forces."
In February, Poland's government signed a deal to buy 20 HIMARS artillery rocket systems from America for USD 414 million as part of a military modernisation drive.
Poland in March last year signed what officials described as a historic deal to buy an American Patriot air defence system for USD 4.75 billion.
Meanwhile, the Polish president in October 2017 signed into law plans to steadily increase the country’s defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2030.
The new Armed Forces Modernisation Plan signed by Błaszczak on Thursday updates previous guidelines under which the Polish government expected to earmark PLN 185 billion (EUR 43 billion, USD 49 billion) for upgrading the country’s military until 2026, state news agency PAP reported.
(gs/pk)
Source: PAP, IAR