Interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan declared on Saturday, in Iași, after a meeting with the mayors of the county, that Romania must urgently make an inventory of the projects financed by the PNRR, following the technical discussions held with the European Commission.
He stated that more than 15,000 projects are underway at the level of local administrations and that it is essential that the authorities quickly decide which investments can be completed by the deadline, the end of August.
“Tomorrow we will have a meeting with all the prefects in the country, and on Monday with all the town halls in Romania to go through this inventory procedure”, stated Ilie Bolojan, emphasizing the need for quick administrative mobilization.
It warned that projects not completed by the end of August risk losing grant funding, even if work is at an advanced stage.
“Those that can be finished by the end of August should remain on the grant component. If they remain there and do not finish, Romania will lose the amount related to the entire project, even if it is completed in proportion to 90%”, Bolojan explained.
For projects at risk of delay, Bolojan specified that verification documents from the supervisors and firm commitments from the builders will be needed. “Those that cannot be finished to be transferred to the loan component”he added.
Regarding the infrastructure objectives, he gave as an example the railway sector, where delays and lack of modernizations affect the assumed performance indicators.
“There are milestones that for objective reasons we cannot fulfill. We have committed to increase the vote on the railway, to reduce the delay hours, but unfortunately we are not achieving these things”, said Ilie Bolojan.
According to the interim prime minister, in the next “all the ministries will have to submit the draft laws to the Parliament, in such a way that, even if this government no longer has the legal competence to adopt ordinances, we can bring all these drafts to the parliamentary debate”.
