Romania’s Government grants EUR 8.2 mln state aid to Vodafone for its new services center in Bucharest

Telecom group Vodafone will get a EUR 8.2 million state aid for the new shared services center which the company recently opened in Bucharest. This will help Vodafone hire some 450 people who will offer IT services to the groups clients in five of its largest markets, but also to the group’s headquarters in London. Romania’s prime minister Victor Ponta mentioned this state aid at the opening ceremony for the new Vodafone services center which he attended on July 2, but the terms and details of the aid were not known. Vodafone invested EUR 6.25 million in equipment for the new service center and in training its first employees. Currently, the center has about 100 employees which offer customer relations services to some 90 million Vodafone customers in UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Ireland. It will have 750 employees by the end of the year and in the next three years the headcount will reach 2,000, according to the group’s representatives. Some 450 of these will work for the IT services department and for them the company can receive state aid. “The aid that Vodafone applied for and that was granted by the authorities is for the development of IT services. The aid will subsidize 40 percent of the salary costs, for two years, for the 450 IT employees, which amount to EUR 20.48 million,” Vodafone explained. For this aid to be approved, Vodafone committed to pay some EUR 28 million in taxes for the 450 employees for the 2014-2021 period. Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com