TAROM will have 4 new aircraft by year end, flights to China and the US to be resumed. 90 km of highways to be completed this year

TAROM will have four new aircraft by the end of the year and flights to China and the United States will be resumed, Transport Minister Răzvan Cuc said on Wednesday evening for the public broadcaster TVR 1.

“By the end of June we will have two new aircraft that will join the TAROM fleet to replace the two Airbuses that have been withdrawn and by the end of this year we will still get two more leased aircraft, so we will have four new aircraft at TAROM: two by the end of June, medium range aircraft, and two other aircraft that will serve the long range by the end of the year,” Minister Cuc told TVR1.

The head of Transport said that this year TAROM plans to resume flights to China and the USA.

“TAROM is a national symbol, and for me it is the soul project. … (…) TAROM is not a bankrupt company but one that has been badly managed. This poor management brought the rigorous financial statements at the end of the financial year,” the Transport Minister said.

He explained how the former management of the company conducted the withdrawal of the two Airbus aircraft that subsequently led to losses for the company by cancelling several TAROM flights.

Infrastructure projects ready to be auctioned amount to EUR 5bn

Infrastructure projects that will be auctioned this year in the transport field amount to about EUR 5 billion from European funds, Răzvan Cuc said.

“All the projects that I have outlined: the Bucharest ring, Sibiu-Craiova, Piteşti-Sibiu, the bridge at Braila – all these are projects that amount to about EUR 5 billion,” the minister said.

Among the phased projects, Răzvan Cuc referred to the 3rd and 4th lots of the Lugoj-Deva highway of European Corridor 4, the 3rd and 4th lots of the Sebeş-Turda highway and the three kilometres of the highway from the entrance to Bucharest on the A3 Motorway , which will be completed by the end of this year.

“We have already inaugurated 15 km of highway,” Cuc said, adding that these are phased projects that were included in the 2007-2013 period of the Sectoral Operational Programme Transport.

Major projects, still obstructed

Răzvan Cuc said he has asked the director of the National Company for Road Infrastructure Administration (CNAIR) to draw up a list of companies which challenge the auctions ‘just for the sake of doing it’, in order to make their names public.

“Unfortunately, the obstruction of major investments in infrastructure through appeals is ongoing, such as the passage from Domnesti. (…) I also talked to the CNAIR Director, I asked him to draw up a list with all the companies that challenge the auctions, who lose for various reasons, to make their names public so that Romanians learn which are the companies that file contestations just for the sake of doing it, without any success,” minister Cuc said.