The largest companies considered de facto bankrupt by the World Bank include heating suppliers RADET, CET Iasi, Electrocentrale Oradea, CET Brasov and Apaterm, railway companies CFR SA and CFR Marfa, chemical plant Oltchim, thermal power plant operator Termoelectrica and coal mining company CNH.
These companies employ 24% of the total 413,859 people working in state-owned enterprises, have accumulated 60% of the total value of arrears and receive 18% of the total state subsidies. This means almost 100,000 people would be out of work were the enterprises to go bankrupt.
The Romanian state companies produced 11% of the national gross added value, but their combined arrears were worth 28 billion lei (EUR6.4 billion) or 5.5% of the GDP.
Ionut Dumitru, head of the Fiscal Council, says arrears in the private sector are higher, making up 13.5% of the GDP, but are also mainly distributed to the private sector, not the state.
Arrears are debts to suppliers, financial institutions or the state budget that are past their deadline.
According to the study, each private sector employee last year generated gross profit of RON370, while state-owned enterprises posted RON7,000 and RON22,000 losses on a local and central level, respectively, per employee. Their losses, amounting to around 0.5% of the GDP, brought the general consolidated budget revenue down 2.5 points.
(EUR1=RON4.3274)