Report: Making investments - a deficient chapter for the management of the Romanian Naval Authority

The Romanian Naval Authority is one of the leading public institutions in terms of the implementation of the investment program approved annually by Guven through the revenue and expenditure budget, according to the report prepared by the Prime Minister's Control Body, a document that refers to 01.01. .2020 - 01.01.2023.

In the report, the inspectors of the Control Body show: "The degree of achievement of the investment program compared to the total values programmed and approved in the BVC was 12% in 2020, 15% in 2021 and 28.20% in 2022 ANR representatives did not spend on the proposed investments in any of the three years analyzed, investments that were closely related to the entity's core activity and whose postponement may lead to additional costs".

The state officials also discovered other irregularities at the NRA, showing that the Naval Transport Directorate within the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure is to blame for some of them.

In the cited document it is stated: "The Naval Transport Directorate within the ministry did not fulfill its role as a state authority in the field of maritime transport and inland waterways regarding the regulatory activity (...) regarding the method of issuing "Gas" certificates free" for the transit of tankers".

Because of this, the inspectors of the Control Corps claim that "two companies issued, without having the right, a number of 1779 "Gas free" certificates for empty tankers that transited the navigable channels, collecting the value of the tariffs established for these operations" .

The report states that, if these activities had been carried out by the ANR representatives, who were charged with this attribution, the minimum amount collected from the ANR budget would have been in the amount of 355,800 euros, and the average amount would have been approximately 871,710 euros.

The checks also showed that most of the hirings carried out at the ANR after the restructuring and reorganization of the public institution, a process that took place in July 2020, were carried out illegally, without the organization of any competition for the occupation of the newly established positions.

The cited document mentions that "the reassignment/assignment to the newly established positions of the persons affected by the reorganization carried out during July 2020 by issuing decisions by the general director of the ANR, was not carried out following competitions or exams, as the case may be, with non-compliance with the provisions from Law no. 53/2003 on the Labor Code, with subsequent amendments and additions".

Regarding the public procurement procedures carried out by the ANR, the inspectors of the Control Body claim that some of them are based on specifications prepared with dedication, which exclude from the start the participation of several companies in the auction. Thus, according to the report, "by drawing up specifications based on the technical characteristics of certain models of sloops, including some constructive requirements specific to maritime vessels even though their destination was for river navigation, as well as the introduction of authorization conditions as service vessels in conditions in which all manufacturers or their representatives sell boats manufactured according to projects dedicated to leisure activities, ANR unjustifiably limited the type of vessels that meet the requirements of the specifications, thus restricting the participation of other economic agents, creating the premise that only certain types of vessels are falls within the criteria established by the respective specifications, favoring the participation of only some economic agents".

The Prime Minister's Control Body shows that, in order to remedy the identified deficiencies, it formulated proposals and recommendations whose implementation is monitored within the post-control evaluation actions.