The ordinance by which the government exempted from the compulsory sale on the OPCOM stock exchange the electricity produced in the new power plants boosted the investments, says the Minister of Economy, Energy and Business Environment, Virgil Popescu.

“In the Ordinance issued last week, by which we exempted from the compulsory sale on the OPCOM stock exchange the electricity produced in the new power plants, we practically gave an investment a push. You don’t know how many requests started to come to the ministry from foreign investors who want to invest in Romania. Until now you could not finance yourself on contracts for the advance sale of electricity that you were going to produce in Romania. By amending the legislation, we gave a boost and we will have a lot of private investments in Romania,” said Popescu, quoted by Agerpres.

On the other hand, the relevant minister reaffirmed that, a few weeks ago, he called for a clear investment strategy for each energy company in the portfolio of the Ministry of Economy, with the deadline for approval in the June 15 General Shareholders’ Meetings.

“The strategies came to me. I told them one more thing: for example, Hidroelectrica should not come up with investment projects from the 90s, from Ceausescu’s time, to complete them, because those are not taken into account. I want to link the performance indicators of the managers to the completion of these investments. Hidroelectrica came up with an investment program of around 25 billion lei. With offshore wind farms in the Black Sea. So they saw that they can think. They come with hydrogen projects. They also come with solar panel plants on dams,” said Virgil Popescu.