Dozens of subsidized state companies, which register losses, have expenses of billions of lei with employees / Data from the Government

On Friday, the government published an extensive analysis of the financial situation of 1,107 state-owned companies for which complete financial data is available, at the level of 2024.

• The state has a total of 1,735 companies, but only 1,421 companies are active, according to data provided by the Ministry of Finance. The remaining 314 “inactive” companies are in bankruptcy, insolvency, liquidation, dissolution or insolvency and are not included in the analysis.
• Of the 1,421 active companies, only 1,107 had complete financial results for the year 2024
• As in the case of public institutions, the authors of the report claim that each database contains different information and there are inconsistencies in some figures and indicators.

The 1,107 state-owned companies had an average number of 256,134 employees in 2024, according to data collected from the Ministry of Finance.

82% of these state companies, respectively 904 companies, were self-financing, without benefiting from subsidies from the state budget, and only 203 companies (18%) were subsidized.

However, these, although few, have very high expenses with employees – as much as the others combined, according to the Government's analysis.

“Although their numerical weight is small, the personnel expenses of the subsidized companies are almost as high as all the personnel expenses of the 904 self-financing companies,” the report states.

43 subsidized, loss-making companies had personnel expenses of 5.4 billion lei

Another critical aspect of the analysis concerns the companies that recorded financial losses in the year 2024.

Among the non-subsidized companies, there are 223 that recorded losses, with cumulative personnel expenses of approximately 1.1 billion lei, while 43 subsidized companies reported losses in the same year, but their personnel expenses totaled 5.4 billion lei.

Only these 43 companies add up to:

– 17% of total personnel expenses in the entire sector of state companies;

– 37% of the total personnel expenses of the subsidized companies.

CFR, Electrocentrale Craiova and Metrorex, in the top companies with the biggest losses

The government presented a list of seven state companies with significant financial losses, of over 100 million lei, at the level of 2024, among them CFR, Electrocentrale Craiova or Metrorex.

“These significant financial losses may signal structural dysfunctions, management deficiencies, subsidy dependency or economic inefficiency,” the report states.

16 companies had expenses, with 0 revenues

A special aspect, but important for the identification of systemic dysfunctions in the management of public companies, is the existence of some companies that register expenses without reporting any income, according to the financial data related to the year 2024.

In the report, 16 state companies are presented in this situation, the biggest expenses being at PARC IND Vâlcea (expenses over 358,000 lei), Parc Industrial Vrancea (340,000 lei), Uzina Energie Solară Timișoara (145,000 lei) and Uzina Energetică Timișoara (120,000 lei).

“No company on this list declared revenues or subsidies in 2024, but recorded expenses. This indicates a possible operational inactivity with the preservation of fixed costs (salaries, rents, maintenance, etc.), administrative operation without real economic activity, which may signal a lack of strategic objectives or a prolonged transition period, reporting deficiencies or lack of transparency, in the context where some of these entities may have activity, but this is not duly reported”, claims the Government.

Top state companies with the highest revenues

“Despite the dysfunctions identified in many areas of the public economic sector”, the Government also points out, “there are state companies that are fully self-financing and register significant revenues, in the order of billions of lei, alongside gross profit. These companies demonstrate a real capacity to operate efficiently on the market and generate economic value without depending on subsidies from the public budget”.

In this regard, the government presented a list of 11 state companies with the highest revenues, which were profitable in 2024 and did not benefit from subsidies, with revenues of over 1 billion lei. The first three profitable state companies with the highest revenues in 2024 were Hidroelectrica, Romgaz and Transelectrica.

Top of the most profitable state companies

Another important insight into the performance of state-owned companies is the analysis of the gross profit recorded. In this sense, the report presents 15 state companies that did not benefit from subsidies and that recorded a gross profit of over 100 million lei in 2024. Among these, the five most profitable companies were: Hidroelectrica, Romgaz, Aeroporturi București, Transelectrica and Transgaz.