OECD Deputy Secretary General claims Romania has the worst roads in the EU

Newsroom 28/06/2016 | 15:32

Romania has some of the worst roads in the European Union despite big sums of money being spent on infrastructure, according to Mari Kiviniemi, Deputy Secretary General for the Cooperation and Economic Development Organization (OECD).

“In the last years, the Romanian Government has invested EUR 9 billion per year in the construction sector. However, it seems better prices can be obtained in auctions,” said Mari Kiviniemi, according to Agerpres.

“According to a study conducted by the World Economic Forum in 2014, the quality of the Romanian roads was lower than any of the other European Union countries, despite the significant expenditures in this department,” she added.

The OECD representative emphasized that one of the causes of this situation is the small number of participants in auctions.

“Our project team has analyzed cases from Romania from 2013 and 2014 and found that, on average, an additional bidder in an auction could lead to a 4.4 percent cut of the final price spent, equivalent of almost EUR 420 billion per year,” said Mari Kiviniemi.

OECD’s final report regarding the “Analysis of current regulation’s impact in key sectors of Romania’s economy” contains 152 recommendations in the three departments involved in this project.

The project was launched at the beginning of 2015 as a collaboration between the Competition Council, the Romanian Government and the OECD.