The bill amending the emergency ordinance on the administration of ports and waterways was adopted by the Senate on May 15, and will soon enter the Chamber of Deputies.

The draft law should get the approval of the Chamber’s transport and legal committees by the end of this month.

Investment fund Fondul Proprietatea, which is a minority stakeholder in the company managing the Constanta port, warned that the bill would cause losses of about EUR 50 million to the state in the next ten years.

The new bill will maintain the status-quo of small rents for some of the largest port operators. This will deprive the port of Constanta, and its major shareholder, the Romanian state, of important incomes, according to Fondul Proprietatea.

Fund representatives explained that the “port oligarchs” managed to obtain the state’s assets in the ‘90s and have been the beneficiaries of preferential rents in the port. The new law would allow these port operators to pay the same rents, instead of paying market prices.

Fondul Proprietatea showed that the first five port operators renting an area of 1.84 million sqm in the Constanta port pay on average RON 0.2488 per sqm every month. By comparison, port operators that have recently signed contracts pay on average RON 0.7820 per sqm per month. This translates into a difference of over EUR 26 million in the last ten years.

A law with similar provisions was approved last year, but was declared unconstitutional at the end of this February by the Constitutional Court.

editor@romania-insider.com