In brief

  • CFR Călători has a 2026 budget: revenue of 4.14 billion lei, of which 1.67 billion comes from the state budget as a subsidy. Recalculated, that is 40.46% of everything entering the company’s till, that is 4.59 million lei on every day of the year. Without the subsidy, the budget would show a loss of 1.65 billion lei.
  • The programmed profit is 25 million lei on revenue of 4.14 billion, a margin of 0.60%. Out of it, 23.75 million, that is 95%, goes to covering accounting losses from previous years, and 1.25 million to legal reserves. The state takes not a single leu in dividends. Total expenditure per 1,000 lei of revenue is 993.96, so the company stays in profit by only 6.04 lei per thousand taken in.
  • The company has 10,126 employees, staff costs of 1.62 billion lei and approved investment of 1.13 billion. On the European funds rows, both revenue and eligible expenditure, the budget enters no sum at all. The decision takes effect on 21 September 2026.
Act: Government Decision no. 737/2026 approving the 2026 revenue and expenditure budget of the National Railway Passenger Transport Company „C.F.R. Călători” S.A., under the authority of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 800 of 21 September 2026
In force from: the date of publication, 21 September 2026

The national company that runs passenger trains received its 2026 budget only on 21 September 2026, on the 264th day of the year it regulates. The figure that says most about its economic model sits on row 3 of the annex: 1,674,441.98 thousand lei in subsidy from the state budget, that is 40.46% of total revenue. The remaining 2.46 billion lei come from tickets, season passes and other own activities, on a network where running speed is restricted over long stretches, as was also shown by the railway strategy that counted 1,688 km of track under speed restriction.

The structure of the budget is simple and harsh. Total revenue is 4,138,240.00 thousand lei, total expenditure 4,113,240.00 thousand, and the difference between them, 25,000.00 thousand lei, is the only positive result in the whole annex. The company has no profit tax entered in the budget, so the gross and the net result coincide. Set against revenue, the profit amounts to 0.60%, or 6.04 lei for every 1,000 lei taken in, exactly the complement of the efficiency indicator on row 57, which shows total expenditure of 993.96 lei per 1,000 lei of revenue.

People are the largest spending line. The annex approves 1,616,624.19 thousand lei for staff, for 10,126 employees, which means a full annual cost of 159.65 thousand lei per employee and 39.30% of all the company’s expenditure. The average monthly earnings per employee entered in the table are 12,558.84 lei. The second largest line, spending on goods and services, is 1,347,615.81 thousand lei, followed by other operating expenditure, 1,091,000.00 thousand.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is that the subsidy becomes a certain sum, not an intention. The 1,674,441.98 thousand lei are approved by Government decision, so they can be claimed and drawn from the state budget over the rest of the year. Divided by the days of the year, the subsidy comes to 4.59 million lei a day. Divided by the number of employees, it covers 165.36 thousand lei per employee, more than the annual cost of one employee, which is 159.65 thousand.

The second effect concerns the passenger directly, even if it is not visible at the ticket office. The company’s own revenue, that is the 2,462,298.02 thousand lei left after deducting the subsidy from operating revenue, covers staff costs to the extent of 152%, so, unlike other state transport companies, CFR Călători pays its people out of what it takes in. The rest of the activity, that is energy, maintenance, rolling stock leasing and the infrastructure use charge, rests on the subsidy.

The third effect is the distribution of profit. Out of the 25,000.00 thousand lei, 1,250.00 thousand go to legal reserves and 23,750.00 thousand to covering accounting losses from previous years. The two sums use up the profit exactly, so row 32, the profit left for distribution, is zero and the dividend rows are empty. The state, as sole shareholder, receives nothing from the company’s 2026 profit, because the whole profit goes on older holes.

The fourth effect is the authorisation of investment. The budget approves investment expenditure of 1,132,936.00 thousand lei, that is 27.38% of annual revenue and 67.66% of the subsidy. Row 47, budget allocations for investment, is empty, and the rows for European funds, from 39 to 45, are empty as well. The annex therefore approves more than a billion lei of investment without showing where it comes from.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

The act does not allow a comparison with 2025. The annex has a single numerical column, „Proposals for the current year (2026)”, and the decision does not refer to the act by which last year’s budget was approved. What certainly changes is the legal position: until 21 September 2026 the company operated without an approved budget for the current year, and from that date it has one.

The preamble says, indirectly, that the approval is late. It invokes Article 4 paragraph (1) letter a) of Government Ordinance no. 26/2013, the usual text for companies under the authority of a ministry, but also paragraph (71), which applies precisely when the budget has not been approved within the deadline set by law and which requires the principal authorising officer to analyse the causes of the delay. Decisions no. 735/2026 and no. 736/2026, published in the same issue for the two port administrations, cite only the exceptional text, without the usual one.

The public picture of payment discipline also changes. The annex enters 70,000.00 thousand lei in overdue payments and 40,000.00 thousand in overdue receivables, so the company owes 30 million lei more than it has to collect. By comparison, the two port administrations whose budgets appeared in the same Official Gazette of Romania have no overdue payments at all.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The budget comes out on the plus side, even if only just. The programmed result is a profit of 25,000.00 thousand lei, and the efficiency indicator, 993.96 lei of expenditure per 1,000 lei of revenue, stays below the break-even threshold.
  • Own revenue covers wages in full. The 2.46 billion lei left after deducting the subsidy exceed staff costs by half, which shows that the commercial activity supports the payroll on its own.
  • The profit goes entirely on clearing the past. Out of the 25 million, 23.75 million go to covering accounting losses from previous years, so the company’s balance sheet improves instead of the money being taken out as dividends.
  • Investment is approved at a substantial level, 1,132,936.00 thousand lei, that is more than a quarter of annual revenue, which for a passenger transport company means rolling stock and major overhauls.
  • All the calculation relationships between the completed rows check out on recalculation and come out exactly, from total revenue through to labour productivity and expenditure per 1,000 lei of revenue.

What remains a problem

  • The budget for a year appears with 264 days of that year already gone. There are 101 days left in which to execute a plan designed for 365, and the analysis of the causes of the delay, which the law requires, is not published.
  • A margin of 0.60% leaves no reserve at all. A deviation of 0.61% in revenue or in expenditure, that is 25 million lei on a budget of 4.14 billion, turns the programmed profit into a loss.
  • The sources of the 1.13 billion lei of investment appear nowhere. The row for budget allocations is empty, the rows for European funds are empty, and reinvested profit is zero, because it goes on old losses.
  • Not a single sum from European funds in the whole budget. Rows 39 and 40, revenue from European funds and eligible expenditure from European funds, are empty, even though the company operates in a sector with dedicated European programmes.
  • Overdue payments, 70 million lei, exceed overdue receivables, 40 million, so the company enters the last months of the year as a net debtor by 30 million.
  • The form has several row headings with wrong references to other rows, including on the line that sets salary expenditure and on the one that sets the profit for distribution.
  • There is no column with the previous year’s outturn, so neither the reader nor Parliament can say whether the subsidy is rising or falling, and by how much.

Practical advice

  1. To see the figures yourself, open the PDF of the official edition attached to the article and go to pages 9 and 10. The annex is reproduced in facsimile, so it appears as a photographed table, and in the article it is explained, not reproduced row by row.
  2. The quickest benchmark for the company’s health is row 57, total expenditure per 1,000 lei of revenue. Below 1,000 means programmed profit, above 1,000 means programmed loss. Here the value is 993.96.
  3. If you want to know how much of your ticket you pay and how much the state pays, subtract row 3 from row 2. The subsidy of 1.67 billion lei represents 40.48% of operating revenue, so roughly four lei in every ten that the company receives for carrying passengers come from taxes.
  4. To find out what is bought with the 1.13 billion lei of investment, ask the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, through a public information request, for the investment programme annexed to the budget. The published annex gives only the total, on a single row.
  5. The company’s suppliers should read row 58, overdue payments, before signing up to payment terms. The 70 million lei show that late payment is a budgeted reality, not an exception.
  6. If you want to follow up why the approval was late, ask the same institution for the analysis required by Article 4 paragraph (71) of Government Ordinance no. 26/2013. The document establishes the causes of the missed deadline and is drawn up before approval, but it is not published in the Official Gazette of Romania.

Frequently asked questions

How much of CFR Călători’s money comes from the state?
The subsidy entered on row 3 of the annex is 1,674,441.98 thousand lei, that is 1.67 billion. Set against total revenue of 4,138,240.00 thousand lei, it represents 40.46%, and against operating revenue alone, 40.48%. Per day, that is 4.59 million lei.
Is the company in profit or at a loss?
In profit, but only just: 25,000.00 thousand lei on revenue of 4,138,240.00 thousand, a margin of 0.60%. Without the subsidy of 1.67 billion, the same expenditure would produce a loss of 1.65 billion lei.
What happens to the profit?
It is used up entirely on two destinations: 1,250.00 thousand lei to legal reserves and 23,750.00 thousand, that is 95% of the total, to covering accounting losses from previous years. The row for the profit left for distribution is zero and the dividend rows are empty, so the state receives nothing.
How many people work at CFR Călători and how much do they earn?
The annex provides for 10,126 employees at year end and the same figure as the annual average. The average monthly earnings per employee entered in the table are 12,558.84 lei, and the full annual cost of one employee, obtained by dividing staff costs by the average number of employees, is 159.65 thousand lei.
What investment is approved?
The total sum is 1,132,936.00 thousand lei, that is 1.13 billion, entered both under financing sources and under investment expenditure. The annex does not detail the objectives and does not show the sources: the row for budget allocations is empty, and the rows for European funds are empty as well.
Why does the budget appear only in September?
The decision does not say. The preamble does, however, invoke, alongside the usual legal basis, Article 4 paragraph (71) of Government Ordinance no. 26/2013, the text that applies when the budget has not been approved within the deadline set by law and which requires the principal authorising officer to analyse the causes. The analysis is not published with the decision.
From what date does the decision apply?
From 21 September 2026, the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania no. 800. Government decisions enter into force on publication unless they themselves provide a later date, and this one does not.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • The annex, row 32: the formula in the heading refers to the wrong rows and, applied literally, gives an impossible result. The row is headed „Accounting profit remaining after deduction of the sums in Rows 25, 26, 27, 28 and 29”. Row 26 is the very net profit from which the deduction is made, while rows 30 and 31, which carry distribution destinations, are missing from the list. Applied literally, the formula would subtract the net profit from itself and give a negative result, even though the same row requires a result greater than or equal to zero in the other annexes. In the annexes to Government Decisions no. 735/2026 and no. 736/2026, published in the same issue and built on the same form, row 32 is defined correctly, by deducting the sums in rows 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31. The check was made on page 9 of the printed edition, not only on the extracted text.
  • The annex, row 11: the heading defines salary expenditure as the sum of rows 13 and 14, although the approved value is the sum of rows 12 and 13. The row is headed „Salary-type expenditure (Row 13+Row 14)”, and the value entered is 1,540,205.00 thousand lei, that is exactly 1,478,050.00 from row 12 plus 62,155.00 from row 13. Row 14 is empty, so the formula in the heading, applied literally, would give 62,155.00 thousand lei, almost 25 times less than the approved sum. The same line in the annexes to Government Decisions no. 735/2026 and no. 736/2026 is written correctly, „Salary-type expenditure (Row 11=Row 12+Row 13)”. The error concerns the row that sets the ceiling for salary-type expenditure, that is precisely the most closely monitored line in a state company’s budget. The check was made on page 9 of the printed edition.

Editorial analysis

This budget solves a real administrative problem, that of giving a company with more than ten thousand employees a legal spending framework for the current year, and it solves it with figures that close. We reworked every relationship between the completed rows, from total revenue as the sum of operating and financial revenue through to labour productivity and the efficiency indicator, and all of them come out exactly. What does not close is not the figures but the row headings, and that says something about how the form circulates: the template used at CFR Călători has different internal references from the one used at the two port administrations approved at the same Government meeting, even though all three ought to be the same table.

The observation that calls for calculation rather than reading lies in the relationship between three rows that never touch in the table. Operating revenue is 4,136,740.00 thousand lei, the subsidy 1,674,441.98 thousand, and staff costs 1,616,624.19 thousand. Subtracting the subsidy leaves 2,462,298.02 thousand lei produced by the company from its own activity, and these cover wages to the extent of 152%. This is a structural difference from other state transport companies, where own revenue does not even suffice to pay the staff. At CFR Călători, the subsidy carries the rest: energy, maintenance, the infrastructure use charge and rolling stock leasing. The practical conclusion for the passenger is less comfortable than it looks: a fare increase would not meaningfully reduce dependence on the budget, because the gap lies in the cost of keeping the trains moving on a restricted network, not in wages.

The second observation concerns the profit and is an optical illusion. A margin of 0.60% looks like a balanced company. Recalculated, it means that a deviation of 0.61% in revenue, that is 25 million lei, or the same sum added to expenditure, wipes out the result entirely. And that profit does not even end up anywhere that produces something: 95% of it goes to covering accounting losses from previous years. The budget therefore programmes exactly enough profit to clear a little of the past, not to finance the future. The 1.13 billion lei of investment, which is 45 times the net profit, remains without a declared source in the annex: budget allocations zero, European funds zero, reinvested profit zero.

The third observation concerns the asymmetry between the deadlines the administration imposes and those it meets. The 2026 budget appears on the 264th day of the year, and the only visible consequence in the act is an additional legal basis in the preamble. The same text invoked there requires an analysis of the causes of the delay, so the document exists on the date of approval, yet it does not reach the Official Gazette of Romania. For a company that lives on 40% public money, the reason why its spending plan appears with three quarters of the year used up should have been public information, not an internal file.

What should be changed

  • Correct the internal references in the headings of rows 11 and 32, through a published rectification. Without it, any later inspection applying the formula written in the table obtains a different result from the approved figure, and the company has no way of proving which of the two versions is the one the Government voted on.
  • Use the same form, word for word, for all budgets approved at the same meeting. Three annexes published in the same issue of the Official Gazette of Romania have three versions of the headings for the same rows, which makes any automated comparison between state companies impossible.
  • Break down the investment financing sources. A single row for 1.13 billion lei, with a single subdivision for budget allocations left empty, says nothing about who pays. Three extra rows, for own sources, loans and external funds, would show whether the investment is covered or merely programmed.
  • Add a column with the previous year’s outturn. Without it, neither the reader nor Parliament can say whether the subsidy of 1.67 billion lei is rising or falling, so public scrutiny stops at noting that the sum exists.
  • Publish the analysis of the causes of the delay together with the decision. The document is required by the very text invoked in the preamble and exists on the date of approval. Publishing it would move the discussion from noting the delay to the causes that produce it year after year.
  • Publish the annex as text, not in facsimile. A photographed table cannot be read by any automated tool, so it can be compared neither over time nor between companies. For a budget supported by 40% public money, the form of publication alone decides how much scrutiny is possible.

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. 800 of 21 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 182 KB the act starts on page 8

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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.