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Romania to privatise rail freight operator CFR Marfă
Published: Wed, 2015-02-11 08:00-
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State-run operator to be put up for sale
The Romanian government has unveiled plans to privatise railway freight operator CFR Marfă. The decision has been made following last year’s unsuccessful attempt to sell the company.
The government aims to sell a majority stake in the firm, but it will not rush into privatising it, as the main objective is to generate significant revenue from the sale, according to Ioan Rus, Romania’s Minister of Transport. The privatisation is expected to overhaul the finances of the troubled operator which has been struggling to stay financially afloat.
“At the last privatisation attempt [in 2014], CFR Marfă received state aid. It had been given during the whole process. The privatisation failed in the first instance, so it will be repeated,” Rus said, as quoted by local news site Romania-Insider.com. “I don’t want to sell CFR Marfă tomorrow morning.”
The time schedule for the planned privatisation was not disclosed by the minister.
Last year, privately-owned railway freight operator Grup Feroviar Român S.A. (GFR) bid to acquire 51% of the shares in CFR Marfă for some €202 million ($229 million). However, the firm failed to pay for the majority stake, and the deal was subsequently scrapped. GFR has said that it has not paid the amount agreed with the Romanian Treasury because the state had not met all the conditions which were set in the contract.
Based in the country’s capital Bucharest, until 1998, CFR Marfă had been a division of Romania’s state-run railways company, Căile Ferate Române (CFR). CFR Marfă has a rolling stock fleet which comprises of some 37,440 freight wagons of various types, and 907 electric and diesel locomotives, according to the latest data available from
Av Jaroslaw Adamowski
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