Romania: President Basescu is dissatisfied with absorption of European funds, especially in transports

January 21, 2010

Bucharest, Jan 21 /Agerpres/ - President Traian Basescu said on Thursday, at the beginning of the talk with a delegation of the European Investment Bank (EIB), headed by Matthias Kollatz-Ahnen, EIB Vice-President, that he was not very satisfied with Romania's capability of absorbing the European funds, especially in transports.

'As I can see, you have already had an extremely positive response to what we discussed about technical assistance during the last visit you paid to Bucharest,' said Traian Basescu at the beginning of the meeting.

The EIB gives support to Romania to implement projects with a view to accessing both structural funds and others. We think that especially the field of transports is the one in which speeding up things would be quite welcome, said the Vice-President of the European Investment Bank.

'We have here a huge problem, you have probably already seen the budget for this year ... It is still on my desk, waiting to be promulgated, but I am still looking at the figures. I am not very satisfied, frankly speaking, with our very capability of absorbing European funds, especially in transports, where we are short of funds to buy land in order to fulfil our duty referring to the national contribution. Here we must find a solution, even with the IMF,' replied Traian Basescu.

As far as possible we are going to try it. Besides the technical assistance, which you have already mentioned, Mr President, what we can do is to allocate resources as efficiently as possible in order to support Romania's capability to absorb funds. This can be done in several ways, some projects with structural funds are jointly financed by the budget, others are based on private investments, others are made by the local authorities ... We are prepared for bi or trilateral talks with representatives of the Government, of the various ministries, also said Matthias Kollatz-Ahbnen. AGERPRES

[www.romaniapress.com]

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