Last year almost two thirds of the CNADNR budget, equivalent to around EUR1 billion, went to highways, while the rest went to national roads and ring roads, shows the latest CNADNR data.
CNADNR has a proposed revenue budget of 7.037 billion lei (EUR1.6 billion) for this year, but the budget has yet to be approved and it is not clear how the money will be divided between highways on the one hand and national roads and ring roads on the other hand.
The division of CNADNR should not be a priority at present, believe representatives of the private sector, who say unfreezing works and providing financing for roads should be the main issue on the institution’s agenda.
“Any bureaucratic activity delays works. For the time being CNADNR is more or less a functional organism and its division should not be a priority because it delays decision making,” says Razvan Niculescu-Aron, first vice-president of Construction Companies Owners’ Association.
So far it is not very clear how the National Roads and Highways Company CNADNR will function in the future, considering that the plan of the new government includes dividing the company into two new entities, a roads company set to return under the authority of the Transport Ministry and a highway company set to remain in the portfolio of the delegate minister for major infrastructure projects Dan Coman Sova.
Prime minister Victor Ponta recently announced that a first reading of the normative act regulating the establishment of the National Highways Company could take place on Wednesday, according to Mediafax.
Asked by the press if he would make a new nomination for the head of CNADNR after Mircea Pop resigned in January, Ponta answered:
“What I can say is I have talked to minister Sova and Wednesday could in fact see a first reading of the normative act setting up a company exclusively in charge of highways, after which CNADNR will return to the Transport Ministry,” Ponta explained.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)