SNCFR cars are squeaking with privatization

A few weeks ago, Romanian media announced a figure – "over 10", standing for how many times the real cost of a SNCFR ticket is higher than current prices. The figure is not only sign for shameless, but for arrogance, too. It is obvious either the issuers or the consignees are not aware of the market rules. SNCFR is known to be a monopoly, on all his three dimensions: passenger and freight transportation and infrastructure. A monopoly simply doesn’t have the right to talk about "real prices" as they are settled under competition terms, exclusively. Adding costs is not difficult at all, but their simple addition and division to the number of passengers represents the travel value only for ignorant people. If a ticket collector preserves the tradition of the little graft and then nobody buys tickets, SNCFR costs are skyrocketing. But to boldly design them as the real value to the honest passenger is not worth-publishing. Therefore, we have stained a banality: the need for SNCFR’s restructuring and privatization.
The same need comes from an external factor: in the year 2002, the access of railway transportation companies to national railway infrastructure in all Europe will be deregulated. This deregulation "will or won’t make us competitive from the point of view of our cars and railway engines", Minister Basescu has recently said.
To facilitate the future SNCFR’s competition ambitions, the railway company was settled to be divided into three different companies (passenger and freight transportation and infrastructure). Freight transportation should be sold off fast, as it might become profitable. Infrastructure will remain under the state control and they way passenger transportation will be dealt with is not clear yet. Not only trade unions, but also the ministries seem to support a budget subsidy, following the model of other European countries. The difference between the policy of subsidizing fields of a larger interest in Europe and the way it might be turned into in Romania comes from the way the subsidy money are managed. In Western Europe – according to projects which could be under the scrutiny of the public authority, and in Romania – as ultimate requests for survival. The subsidy of the passenger transportation would mean a transfer of the public money into the account of the ticket collector and fraudulent travellers.
SNCFR trade unions, as any social group protected by a monopoly, are reluctant towards the changes the transportation minister wants. Minister Basescu would rather prefer a holding to cover the entire railway transportation sector in Romania and keep the debts unitary and, like any other holding, to be able to protect each part of it by using the whole. Alien reasons are also being used: Germany sold the passenger transportation in 10 years, why shouldn’t we do it faster? Like in many other fields, speeding up the settling days concerning joining the EU is emphasizing the paranoid way we perceive Europe: we want to be part of Europe, but we don’t want to pay the costs. Therefore, why a privatization? For, we either give up the deregulation agreement on railway transportation in the year 2002, or the Romanian companies, immature and not restructured go bankrupt.
We desperately need to be amazingly successful with a restructuring, actually the first success except for macrostabilizations since 1989. Traian Basescu has now the opportunity to show what he is capable of.
A comment by Sorin Moisa