Romania Plans To Sell Railway Freight Company CFR Marfa Next Year - Media

“The privatisation of CFR Marfa will be, probably, the most important one in 2009,“ Mediafax quoted Orban as saying at a seminar hosted by the Association of the Railway Industry in Romania.

“We have a delay and we have been expecting for three months and a half the answer of the European Commission," he added.

The EU executive should give the go ahead to the government strategy for the sale of the company. CFR Marfa is wholly owned by the government. Orban said earlier that the state will offer for sale its entire stake in CFR Marfa in an open bid tender, Mediafax said.

Romania, which joined the EU last year, hopes to get at least one billion euro ($1.4 billion) from the sale of CFR Marfa, Orban said in December.

In 2006 CFR Marfa posted some 8.2 million euro in net profit on revenue in excess of 530 million euro. It transported 52 million tonnes of freight in 2006, the last year for which figures were released. Comparative figures were not immediately available.

At the end of last year the company had some 19,000 employees and operated 987 locomotives, 50,980 wagons and two ferry-boats.

($ = 0.736 euro)