Romania’s government has unveiled a revised motorway construction programme, which surprisingly does not include the Pitesti-Sibiu segment of pan-European Corridor IV but instead includes a multitude of other segments that were considered so far only secondary priorities to be developed in the remote future, HotNews online service reported.

The strategy includes motorways to be financed from the EU budget, the national budget and under public private partnership projects by 2022. But the government’s blueprint includes much more highly debatable details.

The strategy was likely designed to explain where the government plans to use the supplementary money derived from higher car fuel excises (planned for next year) – but in fact puzzled investors by the new, unexpected routes.

It’s simply crazy to prefer Bucharest-Brasov route [toward the country’s western border] instead of Bucharest-Sibiu [part of which was already developed during the communist regime], unofficial sources of Renault’s Dacia car plant told Ziarul Financiar daily. The government’s preferred route is not part of the EU’s transport network development strategy, they explained. Furthermore, Pitesti-Sibiu [the remaining segment of Bucharest-Sibiu] is already 85% financed from the EU, they added.

During the 2014-2020 EU budget execution, Romania should use for motorway constructions EUR 3bn under the cohesion programmes and EUR 0.75bn under regional development programmes. The government would use EUR 0.75bn from the national budget – money derived from the supplementary car fuel excise tax, to finance motorway projects. In addition, the government would engage in PPP projects. Its participation in such projects would not exceed 49%.