Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu on Tuesday will have a meeting with Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer, president of OMV, a company that is the majority shareholder of Petrom, with a view to finding a formula to ease tension on consumers as regards the natural gas becoming more expensive.
„We shall suggest a solution relying on the principle of the companies’ social responsibility, by which these companies posting considerable turnover and important profit should reveal their social responsibility to consumers,” said Premier Tariceanu in Victoria Palace on Monday.
He added that they aimed at finding a formula by which part of the increase in prices of gas should go to the companies so that the pressure on the consumers should be lower. Such discussions will be held with all the companies working in the energy field. Tariceanu said it was a mistake to believe that the increase in the price of natural gas was brought about by the near accession to the EU. These increases are generated by the developments in the field on the world market.
The Prime Minister also said that the way the privatisation contracts with certain companies in the energy field were negotiated was wrong, but said that negotiating them again would be a bad sign for investors.
„People talked about the renegotiation of some privatisation contracts. We have even seen some references to the privatised companies being again subordinated to the state. It would be a bad signal given by Romania, but at the same time we cannot but admit that it is now that one can see how badly certain privatisation contracts, such as the one with Petrom, have been negotiated. But these contracts make things very difficult for us,” said Calin Popescu-Tariceanu.
„A month ago I asked the Minister of Economy and Trade not to speed up the process of privatising some power distributing companies, referring to Romgaz especially. This process was to be resumed after they make an analysis of the results of the privatisations in the energy field so far, the privatisation of Petrom included, but also of the gas distributors,” said Traian Basescu last week.
ROMPRES
