Field: Economic development and infrastructure

Subfield: Infrastructure

Details:

Investment in transport infrastructure has several important traits: these are high value investments, that can be recovered over a longer period of time, they are less attractive to the private sector, they need to take into consideration the strategic component of infrastructure objectives, they have high economic and trade risk (depend on the traffic, the way the state regulates freight and passenger transport, etc.). Investment in transport infrastructure is difficult to achieve without the direct involvement of the state. In recent years we have been witnessing significant changes in the way infrastructure investment is financed internationally, with the state playing a less active or even severely limited role (royalties, expropriations, traffic licences), transferring responsibility to private consortia. Investment in this sector in Romania is still below potential, for all types of transport infrastructure. For instance, in 2015 Poland invested approximately 8% of GDP in the transport network, the Czech Republic, 8.2%, while Romania invested a little above 2.3% of GDP. In 2015, Romania invested 0.2% of GDP in its rail network, while Hungary invested 3% of GDP.