In August 2009, the Romanian Railway Industry Association suggested that it would not be possible to sell the state-owned freight rail company, Freight Rail Transport Company (or CFR Marfa), for more than EUR 500mn (US$715mn). The newspaper, Gandul, quoted the association’s general secretary, Stefan Roseanu, as saying: ‘The European railway freight market is liberalised, and a railway system is now being built on a EU-level, where the operators that count are the ones that have the capacity to transport long distances, and that’s not the case of CFR Marfa’.The comment came after the transport minister, Radu Berceanu, had said that the company would be privatised by the end of 2010 and that its sale would bring ‘a few billion euros’ to the state’s coffers. CFR Marfa reported a loss of RON169.4mn (US$57.6mn) in 2008, after a net profit of RON4.7mn in 2007. Last year’s revenue fell by 6.2% to RON1.8bn.

Since our last report, we have further reduced our gross domestic product GDP growth forecast for this year. We now expect GDP to contract by 5.7%. As a result, average annual economic growth over the next five years will come down to only 0.9%, compared to 6.8% in 2004-2008. The overall effect on our freight traffic forecasts when comparing the two five-year periods is therefore very negative. We have also made adjustments to our mode-specific freight carried forecasts. The effect of these changes is that we are now predicting average annual growth in freight carried across all modes, measured in million tonnes per kilometre (mntkm), of 1% in 2009-2013. This figure is marginally ahead of GDP growth.

All transport modes are being affected by the recession. Rail freight traffic will drop, but when the recovery takes hold, competition begins to increase and investments take effect, growth will resume. For the 2009-2013 forecast period, the annual rate of growth in rail freight traffic will be 0.8% - slower than overall economic growth. Freight traffic by road will fare better, with investment in new roads acting as a positive. However, the financial downturn has caused a severe liquidity crisis for Romanian road haulage firms, and around 20% of them are expected to go bankrupt in 2009. We are forecasting annual average growth of 1.2% in 2009-2013 for road haulage, significantly above the average annual rate of GDP expansion. Inland waterway traffic will rise by an annual average of 1.1% as bottlenecks are removed from the Danube; although 2009 should see a substantial drop in freight traffic linked to falling commercial activity. Maritime freight will contract by an annual average of 3.6%, with the steep fall in 2009 being the overriding factor. Airfreight will see growth of 2.2%, hit by the shakeout of low-cost airlines across Europe.