Acting Transport Minister Radu Miruță has rejected the revenue and expenditure budgets for CFR Călători and CFR SA, saying they formalized larger losses and debts and included revenues without legally approved budget coverage.

„I rejected, in the form in which they were presented to me, the revenue and expenditure budgets for CFR Călători and CFR SA. I was asked to approve a budget that formalized bigger losses and bigger debts. I refused. I asked for the budget to be redrafted on the basis of a real, measurable and verifiable plan to cut spending, so that 2026 would mean fewer losses, not more. In the proposed budget, CFR Călători added another 785 million lei under ‘other revenues’ – imaginary money, money the company estimates it would still receive from the state as a subsidy for the public rail passenger transport service, meaning for operating passenger trains. The problem is that this amount is not approved in the state budget. In practice, non-existent money was entered into the budget, and thus, on paper, the company’s loss was turned into profit,” the minister wrote on his Facebook page on Friday.

According to the acting Transport Minister, the calculation was made using the maximum legal rate, as if the law requires the state to always pay the maximum ceiling, which is not true. „I categorically rejected this budget,” the official said.

„For me, that is not management. It means dressing up losses and passing the bill on to taxpayers once again,” he added.

According to the source cited, Radu Miruță asked for the removal of sums that do not have legal budget coverage, for the budget to be based only on real and approved revenues, and for a concrete plan to improve efficiency and reduce losses.

„At CFR SA (the company that manages rail infrastructure), the proposed 2026 budget provided for a 32.9% increase in losses (about 700 million lei). If you are reading this post on the train, I hope you are having cleanliness, decent conditions and the respect every passenger deserves. I say this because, year after year, billions of lei in public money go to the Romanian railway system. The problem is that, far too often, this money seems to disappear into a sieve: you keep pouring it in, but the results are seen far too little,” Miruță added.

AGERPRES