Two state-owned companies likely to swell Romania's budgetary gap

CFR Infrastructură and Termoelectrica, state-owned companies with spectacular historic losses, are at the centre of the scandal generated by the reservations the EU voiced about the calculation of Romania's 2010 budgetary deficit and public debt, with Finance Minister Gheorghe Ialomiţianu discovering on this occasion that the respective companies have not even filed in their financial statements for 2007-2008.

Sources that attended yesterday's Government session told Mediafax that Ialomiţianu had told the premier he held "very serious" information according to which the 2007 and 2008 budgets of the two companies had not been approved by the Government.

Eurostat, the statistical arm of the European Commission, on Tuesday announced it had doubts about the figures referring to Romania's 2010 budgetary gap, quoting uncertainties linked to the impact of including the financial situations of some public companies in the budgetary gap calculation in line with the ESA 95 European methodology. The real gap is likely to widen from 6.4% to 6.9% in GDP.