Romanian rail freight operator CFR Marfă will pay back the EUR 380 Million state aid in 2018, Romanian Minister of Transport Dan Costescu said.
According to him, the final objective to get rid of the “spectre of this state aid”, which must be reimbursed, is the company’s privatisation, however not at any cost, but by trying to get the best possible price for the Romanian state.
“CFR Marfă is in a difficult situation after the final privatisation attempt in 2013, which saw part of its debts converted into shares, failed. DG Competition has recommended us to find solutions to this problem. The solution will be to pay back this money, which is not much, to the Romanian state. We are talking about EUR 380 Million. This would automatically lead to the company’s immediate shutdown. It is not what we want”, said Costescu.
“I’ve said it before, I am not for CFR Marfă’s privatisation at any cost. CFR Marfă can be sold when it becomes attractive so that its sale would bring money to the Romanian state. We will definitely not sacrifice the company for the sake of privatisation. What we need to do at CFR Marfă is to seriously deal with how the company operates”, said Dan Costescu.
According to Minister Costescu, CFR Marfă’s new board has to initiate the company’s restructuring.
“The current situation of CFR Marfă is particularly difficult. The figures of the last nine months show today’s difficult state of the company. We will launch the company’s privatisation using a plan of measures that will ensure the company’s efficiency. We don’t want just to evaluate the human resources, we want to restructure the company keeping in mind the profit indicators”, declared Mihuț Crăciun, General Manager of CFR Marfă, the Romanian national freight transport operator. CFR Marfă announces a restructuring plan to reduce loss and increase the efficiency of the company’s activity.
Thus, the state company initiates the medium and long-term elaboration of the sustainable and profitable development strategy, the consolidation of its position of national leader in railway transport and the development as important player in the regional market.
CFR Marfă plans to apply a plan for restructuring and efficiency improvement to ensure the significant increase of the company’s incomes in parallel with the reduction and optimisation of operation costs.
Moreover, the company wants to prepare for the 2018 planned privatisation.
“We will have to analyse the company’s current situation to see how it could become profitable. We have large arrears to recover, we will have to find solutions to recover this money as soon as possible, but we need a performing management for that”, said Crăciun.
CFR Marfă has to recover arrears worth RON 506 million.
“The medium and long term strategic plan will be developed together with a consultancy company using very well calculated financial indicators. Consequently, in September-October 2016, we will elaborate the strategic plan which will be developed and implemented for a period of 4 years.
Part of the consultancy company payment – for the elaboration of the strategic plan – will be made using the results of this plan, more precisely at the end of the strategy implementation period and if performance figures match those indicated by the consultancy company, said CFR Marfă’s General Manager.
“We want CFR Marfă to have operating profit at the end of 2016, to eliminate losses and to be able to record a significant profit of around RON 40-50 million starting with 2017”, said Romanian Minister of Transport Dan Costescu.
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