DHAKA: China’s finance ministry said on Saturday it will extend a programme of subsidies for buyers of electric-powered vehicles after the current subsidy regime, part of efforts to combat pollution in cities, expires in 2015.

The existing subsidies will be phased out by 2015 as planned, with a new regime to take effect after that date ‘to preserve policy continuity’, the ministry said in a statement on its website. Details of the new subsidies would follow at an unspecified date.

The subsidies were designed to help China meet a goal of putting half a million new-energy vehicles, defined as all-electric battery vehicles and heavily electrified ‘near all-electric’ plug-in hybrids, on the road by 2015 and five million by 2020.

Pollution in cities, in part caused by an explosion in car sales in recent years, is a hot-button issue for China’s leaders, and several measures have been introduced, including curbs on sales of petrol-engined vehicles, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1850 HRS, FEB 08, 2014