As the other European countries, Romania has submitted the CEF financing projects and has managed to contract EUR 1,2 billion within the 2014 and 2015 calls. Romania ranks second regarding the indicative budget compared to the other countries eligible in the Cohesion Fund.
10 proposals were selected within the 2014 calls, 4 of which from Romania and 6 from the EU with participation from Romanian beneficiaries. The CEF financing was of EUR 708 million, of which 687.6 million were allotted to rail projects. For Romania, CEF 2015 meant the selection of 11 proposals, 7 of which were Romania’s proposals and 4 EU’s proposals. The financing recommended for CEF (for which the agreements will be signed soon) was of EUR 519.3 million, of which EUR 441 million are for rail projects. “EUR 1.2 billion were allocated through cohesion funds for Romania which ranks second after Poland. It is important to mention that a significant share of funds is allocated to rail transport”, said Stéphane Ouaki, Head of Unit, Connecting Europe, Infrastructure Investment Strategies, EC, during the Railway PRO Investment Summit.
Also, Romania is located on the Rhine-Danube and Orient/East-Med Core Network Corridors, which rank first of all corridors concerning the number of projects selected within the 2014 and 2015 CEF Transport calls. In this context, Romania has three ongoing rail projects on the Rhine-Danube Corridor and other 2 on the Orient/East-Med, for which the financial agreement is to be signed.
Romania implements 3 projects with CEF financing and awaits the conclusion of the financing agreements for 2 projects
Ongoing projects
- Rehabilitation of Braşov-Simeria railway (part of the Rhine-Danube Corridor), section Braşov-Sighişoara, Braşov-Apaţa, Caţa-Sighişoara subsections. Estimated costs amount to EUR 797.3 million, of which 677.7 million is the EU co-financing (85%). The project includes the rehabilitation of Braşov-Apaţa (38 km) and Caţa-Sighişoara (47 km) sections and will be completed by 2020.
- • The feasibility study for the rehabilitation of Craiova –Drobeta-Turnu Severin – Caransebes railway. Estimated costs EUR 9.9 million of which the EU co-financing is EUR 8.4 million. The project has to be completed by the end of 2017.
- • Review of the feasibility study for rehabilitation of Craiova-Calafat railway. Estimated cost, EUR 1.7 million, of which EU cofinances 85% (or EUR 1.47 million). The project is expected to be completed by September 2017.
Projects with financial signature on pending
- Rehabilitation of Braşov-Sighişoara, Apaţa-Caţa section, project with an estimated cost of EUR 538 million of which the EU will allocate EUR 440 million (81.74%). The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2020 and includes the modernisation of 44 km of line.
- Implementation of the telematics applications for freight service (TAF). The project is estimated at EUR 1.34 million of which EUR 1 million (76.54%) is EUR co-financing. Informatica Feroviară is the project coordinator and Hit Rail B.V. (Netherlands) is another beneficiary. The project should be completed by June 2019.
Recently, the Romanian Ministry of Transport has announced that although Romania contracted the entire sum for 2014 and 2015 calls through the Cohesion Fund and the available sum of the cohesion call is now reserved to the member states that didn’t consume this grant, project proposals could be submitted within the 2016 CEF Transport Calls. Financing is available if there will be member states that don’t consume the available national grant and if projects will be positively assessed by INEA.
EUR 4.7 billion in rail infrastructure projects
In October, CFR SA announced that during the next budget rectification it will probably be necessary to supplement the financing budget for projects “as premises show the absorption level will exceed 100% by the end of 2016”. Total investments for future projects are worth RON 22 billion (EUR 4.7 billion). Financing sources are foreign funds, the state budget and own resources. The implementation graphic increased in the first half of the year, CFR SA’s portfolio exceeding 400 projects on rail infrastructure and superstructure rehabilitation, improvement of exploitation capacities and transport quality and increase of rail traffic safety, CFR SA explains. Thus, for the works implemented within European financing projects, the absorption level is estimated at 72% (over RON 740 million – EUR 164.5 million) for the first 8 months of the year.
“By completing the company’s development strategy and the economic and financial measures implemented, we are actually reconsolidating CFR SA’s essential activity. The main factors that influence this positive trend include the realignment of the currently existing assets of the transport market, the reduction of debts and arrears, improved efficiency of the staff and optimised management. With such an approach, CFR SA can recover in a relatively short period the gaps created by the lack of infrastructure investments from previous years and will assume the role of rail transport activity coordinator, just like all the other European companies “, declared Marius Chiper, CFR SA’s General Manager.
In the first half of 2016, CFR SA completed six large investment projects worth RON 1.32 billion (EUR 293.4 million) and is currently implementing works for the rehabilitation of the railway infrastructure and superstructure worth RON 7.04 billion (EUR 1.56 billion). Apart from these projects, 58 more investment projects worth RON 12.6 billion (EUR 2.8 billion) were launched, while the rest of 336 projects were prioritised at the level of the 8 rail regionals, with total costs worth RON 1.03 billion (EUR 228.9 million).
At the moment, CFR SA has no debts to the state budget and local budgets, nor debts resulted from the company’s current activity and has managed to reduce arrears to RON 97.4 million (EUR 21.6 million) in the first eight months of 2016. Also, through the projects developed so far, the company has managed to reduce the number of speed restrictions on the entire rail network from 596 restrictions in the previous years to 187 restrictions in 2016.
by Pamela Luica
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