In brief
- The Bucharest metro has a 2026 budget only from 11 September, with 254 days of the year already spent. The Government approved Metrorex’s revenue and expenditure budget through Decision no. 711/2026, invoking in its very preamble the text that applies when the statutory approval deadline has been missed. Of the 365 days of the financial year, 111 were left.
- Expenditure exceeds revenue by 295.51 million lei. The act approves total revenue of 1,797,964.28 thousand lei and total expenditure of 2,093,473.75 thousand lei, that is a negative gross result. The table also spells out what that ratio means: for every 1,000 lei collected, the company spends 1,164.36 lei.
- The State is putting almost 2.66 billion lei into the metro in 2026, through two channels. The subsidy for passenger transport is 761.49 million lei, and the budget allocations for investment 1,901.71 million lei. The subsidy alone covers 42.35% of the company’s total revenue.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 774 of 11 September 2026
In force from: 11 September 2026, the date of publication
The company that keeps the Bucharest metro running received its 2026 budget on 11 September, with almost three quarters of the year already gone. Government Decision no. 711/2026 has a single article, which approves the revenue and expenditure budget set out in the annex, and the annex is the two-page table that holds the metro’s entire financial year. It is not the only state company budget to reach the Official Gazette of Romania late: in the last week of August, five state company budgets appeared at once, among them that of CNAIR.
The figure that gives the measure of the year sits in line 20 of the table: a gross result of minus 295,509.47 thousand lei, that is a planned loss of 295.51 million lei. This is not an estimate that slipped out of control along the way, it is the sum the Government approves as such, in mid-September, for a financial year that ends in less than four months.
The budget of a company placed under the authority of a ministry is not approved by the will of its own directors. Government Ordinance no. 26/2013, the act that lays down financial discipline for state-owned economic operators, requires these budgets to go through a Government decision, on the initiative of the ministry under whose authority the company sits. For Metrorex, that ministry is the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.
The same ordinance also fixes the calendar. Article 4(6) requires budgets to reach the Ministry of Finance within 120 days of the entry into force of the annual State budget law, and to be approved within 150 days of the same date. State Budget Law for 2026 no. 43/2026 was published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 242 of 27 March 2026, so the 150-day period ran out at the end of August. The decision appeared more than two weeks later.
That is precisely why the preamble of the decision relies not only on Article 4(1)(a), the ordinary text, but also on paragraph (71). That paragraph applies exclusively where budgets „have not been approved within the period laid down in paragraph (6)” and allows them to be approved up to 31 October of the current year. The act tells you itself, from its first sentence, that it is travelling the late route.
What it changes in practice
The first effect is the simplest and the most important for the 4,893 employees entered in the budget as the average headcount: from 11 September, the company once again has a basis for receiving money from the State budget. Article 4(8) of Government Ordinance no. 26/2013 provides that missing the approval deadline suspends the allocation of budget funds to that operator until the budget is approved under paragraph (71). Publication of the decision lifts that suspension.
The second effect concerns what the table actually authorises. The budget provides for total revenue of 1,797,964.28 thousand lei, of which 1,797,919.28 thousand from operations and 45.00 thousand financial revenue. Operating revenue includes the subsidy of 761,490.00 thousand lei granted under the legal provisions in force. The transfers line is empty.
On the expenditure side, the total of 2,093,473.75 thousand lei breaks down into 2,093,413.75 thousand in operating expenditure and 60.00 thousand in financial expenditure. Operating expenditure splits four ways: 559,007.46 thousand for goods and services, 21,474.48 thousand for taxes, duties and assimilated payments, 1,070,511.40 thousand for staff and 442,420.41 thousand in other operating expenditure.
The staff chapter deserves a closer look, because it explains half the budget. Salary-type expenditure is 973,843.88 thousand lei, of which 917,450.40 thousand in wages and 56,393.48 thousand in bonuses. On top come 300.00 thousand in other staff expenditure, 810.79 thousand for the mandate contract and for the other governing bodies, commissions and committees, and 95,556.73 thousand in employer contributions. Taken together, staff absorbs 51.14% of total expenditure, and the salary component alone 46.52%.
The third effect concerns investment, which is financed separately from operations. Investment funding sources amount to 1,958,378.45 thousand lei, of which 1,901,709.00 thousand in budget allocations, that is 97.11%. Investment expenditure is entered at the same value, 1,958,378.45 thousand lei, so the chapter balances exactly.
The fourth effect is one that few people look for in acts of this kind: the budget also approves a level of arrears. Overdue payments rise to 260,127.00 thousand lei, and overdue receivables to 307,283.00 thousand lei. The level of overdue payments is not mere information. Article 13(1)(c) of Government Ordinance no. 26/2013 makes it an administrative offence to exceed the level approved through the revenue and expenditure budget, so the figure works as a ceiling.
Finally, the table also fixes the underlying indicators on which the rest rests. The headcount forecast at year end is 4,973, the average number of employees 4,893, the average monthly earnings per employee 16,187.26 lei, labour productivity 367.45 thousand lei per person, and total expenditure per 1,000 lei of total revenue, 1,164.36 lei.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The legal change is plain and can be read straight from the act: until 11 September 2026, Metrorex had no approved budget for the current year, and from the moment the 150-day period ran out, the allocation of State budget funds was suspended by operation of Article 4(8). After publication, the company has a budget and access to money is reopened, on the exceptional route in paragraph (71), available until 31 October 2026.
There is also a change of regime that does not come from this decision but explains it. Government Emergency Ordinance no. 89/2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1.203 of 24 December 2025, rewrote this whole set of rules at the end of last year. Article XXVIII amended paragraphs (71), (73), (8) and (9) of Article 4, while Article XXXV, also cited in the preamble of the present decision, provided that the pay policy objectives used in drawing up the 2026 budgets are set by that ordinance, by way of derogation from the general rules in the 2013 ordinance. Article XXXVI of the same act requires state-owned economic operators to maintain in 2026 the salary entitlements payable as at 30 November 2025, with no increases and no indexation, apart from the sums flowing from the rise in the minimum wage.
Paragraph (73) adds a boundary worth remembering for anyone who follows state company budgets: after 31 October, budgets can no longer be approved at all, and paragraph (9) provides that in that case no further State budget funds are allocated until the end of the year. The metro’s budget was approved 50 days before that deadline.
The same delay shows on the railway: the CFR Călători budget, with a subsidy of 1.67 billion lei, was also approved in September 2026.
A figure-by-figure comparison with 2025 cannot be made from this act. The published annex has a single numerical column, headed „Proposals for the current year (2026)”, with no column for the amounts realised or approved for the previous year, as some forms of this type have. Nor could the newsroom open the company’s 2025 budget at source: it was approved by Government Decision no. 860/2025, and the Official Gazette of Romania issue number could not be established with certainty during research, while the comparisons circulating in the press are no substitute for the official text. Accordingly, you will not find in this article any percentages of increase or decrease against last year. You will find them once the 2025 edition can be read in full.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The company once again has a legal basis for receiving State budget funds, after the period in which allocation was suspended by operation of Article 4(8) of Government Ordinance no. 26/2013.
- The budget was approved 50 days before 31 October, after which, under paragraph (73), it could no longer have been approved at all in 2026.
- The investment chapter balances exactly, 1,958,378.45 thousand lei in sources and the same sum in expenditure, so the network development side has declared cover on paper.
- The table publishes the ceiling for overdue payments, 260,127.00 thousand lei, a figure that turns into an administrative offence if exceeded and that anyone on the outside can track.
- The annex is published in full in the Official Gazette of Romania, with every line and with totals that check against each other, not in summary form.
What remains a problem
- Approval comes after 254 of the 365 days of the financial year, so the budget largely authorises spending that has already taken place.
- The planned loss, 295.51 million lei, comes with no recovery measure and no deadline anywhere in the act.
- The 1,070.51 million lei for staff exceeds by 34.04 million lei everything the company collects outside the subsidy.
- The average monthly earnings in line 52 cannot be reconstructed from the published lines, because the act ties the figure through a footnote to a supporting annex that is not published.
- The annex has a single numerical column, with no values for the previous year, so the reader cannot see from the act whether an indicator has risen or fallen.
- The analysis that Article 4(71) requires of the ministry, the one that establishes the causes of the delay and any persons at fault, is not published together with the decision.
Practical advice
- Read the annex starting from line 20, the gross result. That shows at a glance whether the budget is built on a loss or on balance, and the rest of the table explains why.
- Check the correlations yourself, they are written into the line labels. Line 1 must equal line 2 plus line 5, line 6 must equal line 7 plus line 19, and line 10 must equal lines 11, 14, 16 and 17 added together. If one of them does not balance, either the table has a problem or the extraction from the PDF moved a figure.
- Remember that in the table every sum is in thousands of lei, a note printed in small type above the column. Confusing thousands of lei with lei turns 761,490.00 into 761 thousand lei, a thousand times less than the reality.
- Do not confuse the subsidy with the investment allocations. The subsidy, line 3, is part of operating revenue and covers day-to-day running. The budget allocations, line 47, finance investment and are accounted for separately, so they do not appear in total revenue.
- If you are tracking a supplier of the company, look at line 58, overdue payments. It is the only place in the act that says how much of the debt to third parties the budget accepts will remain unpaid when due.
- For the full text, open the PDF of the official edition attached to this article. Since the annex is reproduced in facsimile, that is photographed, it cannot be transcribed line by line without the risk of moving a figure onto the wrong row.
- If you are expecting an amendment during the year, the date to watch is 31 October 2026. That is the date up to which Government Ordinance no. 26/2013 still allows a late budget to be approved.
Frequently asked questions
What does this decision actually approve?
From when does it apply?
Why is the 2026 budget approved only in September 2026?
What would have happened if the budget had not been approved by 31 October?
How much is the State giving the metro in 2026?
What does a gross result of minus 295,509.47 thousand lei mean?
Does this decision change the price of a metro ride?
Is more or less money being given than last year?
What does total expenditure of 1,164.36 lei per 1,000 lei of revenue mean?
How many people work on the metro, according to the budget?
Where can I find the full text of the decision and of the annex?
Editorial analysis
What says most about this budget is not a figure in the table but a fragment of legal basis in the first sentence of the decision. Alongside the ordinary text, Article 4(1)(a), the preamble cites paragraph (71), which applies exclusively where the budget „nu a fost aprobat în termenul prevăzut la alin. (6)”, that is where it was not approved within the period laid down in paragraph (6). The act admits its own lateness, in the language of cross-reference. The calendar confirms it: the State budget law was published on 27 March 2026, the 150-day period ran out at the end of August, and the decision appeared on 11 September. By that date, 254 of the 365 days of the financial year had gone, almost 70%, and 111 were left.
The same paragraph (71) does not merely extend the deadline. It requires the principal authorising officer, here the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, to draw up an analysis through its own control bodies, establishing „cauzele și/sau persoanele vinovate”, the causes and the persons at fault for missing the deadline, and it gives that officer the right to order sanctions. Paragraph (72) specifies that the analysis is presented together with the submission of the budget for approval. Consequently, at the moment the Government voted this decision, there was already a document on the table stating why the delay occurred and who is answerable. That document does not appear in the Official Gazette of Romania and is not mentioned in the act, even though the lawfulness of the approval depends on it.
In the table, the observation you cannot see reading line by line emerges from a subtraction. Total revenue is 1,797,964.28 thousand lei, and the subsidy 761,490.00 thousand. That leaves 1,036,474.28 thousand lei the company produces on its own, from selling rides and from its other activities. Staff expenditure, 1,070,511.40 thousand lei, exceeds that sum by 34,037.12 thousand lei. In other words, everything the metro earns from its own activity is not even enough to pay the people who run it, before a single kilowatt of energy, any spare part and any repair. And the subsidy, the one worth 42.35% of revenue, does not cover an operating deficit; it enters a structure in which the staff cost alone consumes almost all of it.
The second observation that calls for arithmetic sits in line 52, the average monthly earnings per employee, 16,187.26 lei. The line label says the indicator is determined „pe baza cheltuielilor de natură salarială”, on the basis of salary-type expenditure, and Article 3(f) of Government Ordinance no. 26/2013 defines average gross monthly earnings as the ratio between salary-type expenditure and the average number of employees divided by the number of months. Applied to the lines published in the same annex, 973,843.88 thousand lei divided by 4,893 employees and by 12 months, the formula gives 16,585.66 lei, some 398 lei more. The difference does not necessarily mean an error: a footnote to the annex refers, for this line, to line 151 of supporting annex no. 2, a document that is not published. It does mean that the act publishes a control indicator the reader cannot verify from the very figures the act itself sets before him.
It is also worth saying that the annex, although it is the only thing that matters in this decision, is published without a comparison column. It has a single string of values, „Proposals for the current year (2026)”, and not one line of amounts realised or approved for 2025. The practical result is that an act moving almost 2.66 billion lei of public money, subsidy and investment allocations together, that is around 7.3 million lei a day, gives the reader no means of setting it beside the previous year. The contrast with the budget of a public institution is visible: there, the comparison with the previous year is part of the form.
What should be changed
- Publication, together with the decision, of the analysis required by Article 4(71). The document already exists on the date of approval, because paragraph (72) requires it as an annex when the budget is submitted. Effect: the delay stops being a formality consumed inside the ministry and becomes verifiable, with named causes and accepted responsibility, exactly as the text requires.
- Adding a column for the previous year in the annex that is published. The form already has the lines; only the reference value is missing. Effect: any reader sees for himself whether the subsidy, staff expenditure or overdue payments are rising or falling, without hunting down last year’s edition and without depending on comparisons made by those with access to the supporting documents.
- Publication of the supporting annexes referred to in the footnotes, at least of the lines invoked. Lines 52 and 53 of the published annex refer to lines 151 and 152 of supporting annex no. 2, which remains unpublished. Effect: the average earnings indicator becomes reconstructible and the 398 lei gap against the result of the formula in the ordinance is closed.
- Completion of line 26, the net profit or loss for the period, even where the result is negative. In the published annex the line is empty, although the formula written into its own label can be applied to the figures above it. Effect: the year’s loss appears once, in its proper place in the form, and no longer has to be inferred by the reader from the gross result line.
- Inclusion, in budgets approved on a loss, of a statement about recovery measures and their timetable. The decision approves a loss of 295.51 million lei without saying what is to be done about it. Effect: approving the budget stops being merely an authorisation to spend and becomes a commitment as well, with a horizon to return to.
- Moving the deadline for approving state company budgets into the first part of the year, by tying it to the submission of the draft rather than to the date of the State budget law. Today the 150-day period runs from a date that itself shifts from year to year. Effect: a company with 4,893 employees and investment of almost two billion lei no longer operates for three quarters of a year without an approved budget, and the 31 October exception becomes an exception again.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Gazette of Romania no. 774 of 11 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 127 KB the act starts on page 6
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.