EnglishThirteen foreign countries owe Romania over 1.2 billion dollars, originating from unpaid commercial contracts concluded before 1989, while Cuba owes Romania another USD 2 billion in transferable rubles, but over the last twenty years negotiations with Havana on this issue yielded no results.
Romania has several ongoing government agreements with seven out of the fourteen countries that have outstanding debt, according to an official reply from the Ministry of Finance, received by our newspaper.
The Ministry of Finance says that over the last two years, Romania recovered around EUR 15 million Euros and USD 10 million, from the countries it has already concluded agreements with. The largest amount was recovered from Syria: 7.3 million Euros, in 2008, and 7.15 million Euros in 2009.
Last year, Romania successfully recovered the first tranche of the 5.7 million dollars owed by Iraq.
Romanian and Iraqi authorities agreed in 2005 to cut Iraq"s outstanding debt from 1.7 billion dollars, to 977 million dollars, after lengthy negotiations assisted by the Paris Club.
Romanian authorities were criticized for reducing Iraq"s debt and rescheduling it, but some experts claim that the recovery rate of around 60% that Romania obtained, far exceeds the terms imposed by creditors belonging to the Paris Club (approximately 20%).
The Ministry of Finance has several objective explanations for the slow pace at which the Romanian government is moving when it comes to collecting its foreign debt: the major economic, financial and currency difficulties that some African countries are faced with, the fact that some of the debtor countries are "conflict areas", while others are ""post conflict countries".
On the other hand, over the last twenty years Cuban authorities repeatedly rejected any negotiations concerning the ratio for the conversion of transferable rubles into US Dollars and the ways for paying back its debt towards Romania.
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