Radu Berceanu, mad at Mircea Geoană for ruining negotiations with Bechtel

Minister of Transportation, Radu Berceanu, has begun negotiations in January, with high Bechtel officials, the American contractor working on building the Transilvania highway. Minister Berceanu stated yesterday, in a press conference, that while he was negotiating with Bechtel a new payment schedule more in tune with the current economic situation, PSD leader Mircea Geoană said, while he was in Cluj, that the Government has enough money to build the highway, which is one of Romania"s priorities for this year. "Under these circumstances, we failed to get a payment delay of 45 days, instead we had to fight tooth and nail to get a payment delay of 35 days", Radu Berceanu added.

The contract with Bechtel for the construction of the Transilvania highway will be terminated if the company and the Romanian state do not sign a protocol concerning this project, Berceanu announced: "If we do not sign a protocol with Bechtel on the terms we"re looking for, then we"re going to say goodbye, with tears in our eyes, maybe, but we cannot accept an agreement where Bechtel has all the rights, and the Romanian state has all the obligations".

The minister added that he hopes that the protocol, which will specify the number of highway kilometers the American company is expected to deliver starting this year, and the funding and compulsory purchases that the Romanian state must ensure, will be signed this week. The contract will be cancelled even at the risk of the Romanian state having to pay 50 to 60 million Euros in fines, and the works will be halted for two years until a new contractor will be selected.

• The Minister of Transports also picked on mayors Oprescu and Pandele

Mircea Geoană is not the only member of the Social Democrat Party that minister Berceanu has a bone to pick with. Berceanu said yesterday that he was dumbfounded to see the stage the project of the Bucureşti - Ploieşti highway is in. The first two sectors which were auctioned off are still in the design stage almost two years later. The route was changed several times, so as to cross plots of land owned by certain people, in particular in the Voluntari area, (editor"s note: where the mayor is PSD member Florentin Pandele), says the Minister of Transportation. Mr. Berceanu also said that the execution project was changed to include three lanes instead of three, and the highway now begins in some alleys in Bucharest"s Northern Area, and no one could tell how the thousands of cars will enter the highway to go to Ploieşti. Berceanu says that he will go with the projects in their current form, because otherwise the ministry will have to pay damages to the companies involved, who got paid additional payments worth tens of millions of lei in 2008 due to changes in the projects and to additional orders.

Radu Berceanu is also angry at the mayor of Bucharest, Sorin Oprescu, who said with an uncannily carefree tone that he will forego building auxiliary roads to the highways leading to Bucharest. "It"s going to be crazy for hundreds of cars coming to Bucharest on several lanes and have to go into the city on just two lanes or through some alleys", he said.

• Berceanu threatens to lay off thousands in companies in companies supervised by his ministry

The situation of the companies supervised by the Ministry of Transportation is extremely complicated, Radu Berceanu admitted yesterday. He claims that former minister Orban left him unpaid invoices worth over 500 million Euros (meaning some two billion lei). Adding to that the works delivered by contractors in 2008 for which invoices have not yet been issued, the Ministry of Transportation has close to 700 million euros in outstanding debts. "Contractors didn"t have the money to pay the VAT upon issuing the invoices and have thus postponed issuing the invoices in order to make sure we have the money to pay them", explained minister Berceanu.

Given these circumstances and the fact that the state budget for 2009 is extremely frugal, Berceanu threatens to lay off employees. He claims that there are thousands of employees in CFR (Romanian Railways), the National Highway Company, as well as in Metrorex and that the aggregate wage bill will see some serious cuts. In some companies, the aggregate wage bill doubled last year. "CFR Infrastructură" has about 28000 employees, and its aggregate wage bill has increased last year from 500 million lei to 711 million lei. The National Highway Company saw a substantial increase in the number of employees, from 428 to 566 in the headquarters, with an additional 6000 employees in its seven regional departments. Radu Berceanu claims that such a high number of employees can not be justified, as many services of the road departments were outsourced through multi-annual service contracts.

Mr. Berceanu concluded by saying that he would rather deal with people going on strikes because of layoffs than to have the Ministry become insolvent or have it lose all the money it has available for investments.