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| Media Headlines |
| (2011-07-29) |
| Last updated: 2011-08-01 20:11 EET |
There are a number of game-shows, both in Romania and abroad, that ask contestants to guess the price of a selection of goods. The Romanian print press today has employed the same format, this time asking its readership to guess the prices of Romanian highways. The big surprise is that just about everyone in Romania is familiar with the prices for motorways – everyone, except the people actually building them.
“The correct price shows the huge amount of money that is being siphoned off using highway constructions”, headlines the daily paper Adevarul. Highway construction has dragged on for years and is one of the major loss-making businesses of the past 20 years. The same daily paper writes that the prices of road construction have soared to 20 million euros per kilometer instead of the usual 6 million euros, which shows how cheap road-building should actually be.
“Expensive, flawed and slow” seems to be the slogan of road builders, who construct approximately 10 km of highway in Romania every year, as compared to Spain, where nearly 440 km of asphalted highway is created each year. Today Romania has the most substandard highway network at EU level with only 320 kilometers of motorway, despite lying at the junction of several key EU roads.
Particularly puzzling is the case of the Transylvania highway that is to link Brasov, central Romania, and Romania’s western border-crossing point with Hungary, Bors. The original plan concerns some 415 km of motorway, although the construction itself has barely begun. Only 52 kilometers were built during the first seven years. Holding the blame is first and foremost the American contractor Bechtel, but also the Romanian Ministry of Transportation.
According to a recent study conducted by the World Bank Group regarding Romanian transportation, the ministry does not have a coherent and comprehensive strategy for developing the existing road infrastructure. The daily paper Evenimentul Zilei recalls how several archeological sites were uncovered just before the very first few kilometers of highway were scheduled for building.
The paper especially points to the mounting interest that foreign researchers have taken in these pristine building sites, given that Romania, unlike its neighbors, kept its areas of archeological interest closed throughout the communist period.
Comparing the building costs of a highway in Romania to the similar costs of a highway built in Bulgaria, the daily paper Romania Libera writes that our neighbors can pull off the same job at half the price. Why should two countries with roughly the same economy and prices pay differentially for highway-building projects? In answering these questions, journalists at Romania Libera point to reasons such as corruption, incapable bureaucracy and a severe lack of professional standards.
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