The Chinese government has launched a pilot program to subsidize energy-efficient and new-energy vehicles in the public transport sector in 13 cities, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said on Tuesday in a statement.

The ministry said the subsidies would mainly go to 10-meter-long, or above, buses.

The statement was a supplement to an earlier joint statement by the MOF and the Ministry of Science and Technology in January, which said the central government would offer a one-off subsidy for the purchase of mixed-power, electric and fuel-cell vehicles.

The MOF said on Tuesday that mixed-power passenger cars would be given subsidies up to 420,000 yuan (US$61,435) each, and electric and fuel-cell vehicles would get subsidies of 500,000 yuan and 600,000 yuan each, respectively.

The pilot program was officially launched on Tuesday in 13 cities including Beijing and Shanghai.

Local governments are also required to allocate fund for the building and maintenance of facilities for such vehicles.

The ministries aimed to promote the use of more than 60,000 new-energy or energy-efficient vehicles in public transport, taxi industry, postal and urban sanitary services in those 13 cities within four years.

(Xinhua News Agency February 18, 2009)