Government shelved 370 million Euro loan for Metro for three years

Romania failed to take advantage of an approved 370 million Euro loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) for upgrading the Bucharest Metro for three years, The Diplomat can reveal.

September 2009 - From the Print Edition

Last July Romanian Minister of Transport Radu Berceanu announced that the European Investment Bank (EIB) had just approved a 370 million Euro loan for the construction of a new Metro line to connect Bucharest centre to the western neighbourhood of Drumul Taberei.
But Berceanu failed to reveal the fact that this loan was granted by the EIB in November 2006, when the Democrat Liberal (PD-L) was then Minister of Transport. He was removed in April 2007 when Liberal Ludovic Orban took over the position until December 2008.
This means that the funds have been available for three years, but the Romanian authorities have shown no interest in spending them.
EIB officials told The Diplomat that after the bank approved the loan in 2006, the EIB had not been contacted to seal the agreement for the amount to be disbursed.
Romanian authorities have been complaining for years about the difficulty to attract funds for rebuilding and constructing the country’s much needed public transport infrastructure.
The new underground line is estimated to cost a total of 700 million Euro and the Ministry of Transport, which retains control of the Bucharest Metro, hopes to receive the rest of the money through another loan from the EIB.
In the last 19 years only six new Metro stations have been constructed in Bucharest.