May 2010

Investment In Infrastructure - A Review
The last three Romanian ministers of transport had a total budget of 12.8 billion Euro between 2005 and 2009. 7.2 billion Euro have been invested in this time in the Romanian transport infrastructure. The result is quite disappointing: 109 kilometers of highway and 124 km ring roads were built, and 812 km roads repaired. This represents 5 percent of the entire road network in Romania. Out of the network of now 10 784 km of railways, only 38 km of rails have been electrified, 540 km of tracks were repaired. According to a study of the Brussels-based Association of European rail and infrastructure companies (CER) Romania invested just 147 Euro per kilometers into the existing rail network in 2006. Thus it secured an inglorious last place in the EU-wide comparison for the country.

April 2010

Volcanic Eruption Brought 7 Million Euros Losses To Romanian Airline Industry
The flight cancellations caused by the eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull on Iceland, the produced a total of about 7 million Euro losses to Romanian airborne transportation industry. As the responsible Ministry of Transport announced, the national airline Tarom lost about 4 million Euro. The air safety agency ROMATSA lost a further 1.2 million Euro. The two Bucharest airports lost about 1.3 million Euro. Finally, the losses of the other Romanian airports were around 1 million Euro. The losses incurred by the general flight ban, that was effective between April 16th to 20th.

March 2010

Most Costly Tender Of Romanian Transport Ministry So Far
May 19th 2010 is the deadline for the submission of offerings for this year's most expensive tender of the Romanian Ministry of Transportation. It is the expansion of the ring road Deva Orastie to a highway. The costs: 253 million Euro. The section is part of the Nadlac-Constanta highway, which will cross the whole of Romania from east to west. For this section the first call was organized in 2006, but it has been canceled due to "technical reasons". Since then, several calls were organized, but they all ended with re-organizing the tender. The contract should have been awarded in October last year, but the decision has been challenged. Originally, the project was to cost 130 million Euro. The construction is financed from EU funds with the participation of Romanian state.

February 2010

Government says to have no money for roads already
The Romanian government has no money left in February for road construction. As the Transport Minister Radu Berceanu announced, funds that were allocated for maintenance had been already spent four times because heavy snowfalls. Berceanu also warned against next summer complaints about potholes in the streets. It simply lacked the money for the repairs. For the construction of highways only 350 million Euro have been scheduled this year. But for the construction of the 2010 planned sections of the Transylvania highway, the U.S. construction company Bechtel alone needs 380 million Euro. For 2010 there were only about 50 kilometers of highway planned, more than 100 kilometers of highway were planned for this year to be build in total, as well as the completion, expansion, etc. of several ring roads.

January 2010

Romanian Goods Transporters Expect Growth In 2010
The Romanian Association of the goods transporters UNTRR expects in 2010 a growth of 6 per cent for the transport of goods by road up to a volume of more than 2 billion Euro. Last year, the transportation of goods on roads decreased by about 1 billion Euro, representing a decline of 35 per cent compared to 2008. The Association's optimism is based on a comeback of two economic branches, that were most affected last year: the food industry and fuel transportation. No positive signs are expected from the car, machinery and building material industries, as they said. The ongoing for several years, consolidation of the market, that started some years ago, will be continued in 2010.