Anca Boagiu: Transportation Ministry has always had money. Things did not budge because of carelessness, ignorance or ill will

The Transportation Ministry neither is nor has been a poor ministry, so if things are going badly, it is out of ignorance, carelessness or ill will. Former transportation minister Radu Berceanu made one mistake - he trusted people who were not professionals, says transportation minister Anca Boagiu.

From the armchair where Traian Băsescu used to sit over 10 years ago, Boagiu says, in an interview for ZF, that she has come back to the ministry as to a "home" because she did previously fill this position 10 years ago for a short span of time. She found everything the same as she left it, as if nothing had happened, says the minister. And in fact nothing has happened.

The motorway building programme was launched in Romania in her first term as a minister, in 2000. The motorway maps are the same, only the motorways have not been built. Who is to blame for this gaping hole that stretches between 2000 and 2011? Has there been no money?

Over the past 10 years, the Transportation Ministry has had over 20 billion euros available, which it used to build around 200 km of motorway. In the past three years and a half, the ministry could have taken at least 2 billion euros from the EU, in non-repayable funds for the infrastructure, but only took 45 million euros, i.e. 1% of the overall 4.5 billion-euro programme (to which the 1 billion-euro national co-funding is added). At the same time, The National Company of Motorways and National Roads (CNADNR) is the most subsidised company in Romania - 1.6 billion euros in 2010 alone. But it has 200 million euros in unpaid debts. As for railway companies, they are in debt over their heads. CFR Infrastructură (CFR Infrastructure) alone has 1.4 billion euros in debts - which amounts to 18% of Romania's deficit last year (8 billion euros).