"Although the contracting rate of the structural funds in Romania is close to the average of the Member States, our country is again ranked last in the European Union regarding the absorption of EU funds at the end of 2012", a KPMG statement, issued Monday states, Agerpres reports.
The first place in the EU absorption funds top belongs to Estonia and Lithuania - with 59%, followed by the Czech Republic (57%), Latvia (56%), Slovenia (50%) and Poland (49%). A troop of four countries - Slovakia (40%), Hungary (40%), Bulgaria (34%) and Romania (12%) - are at the KPMG top end.
Regarding the contracting rate, Romania is ranked last (70%), and Bulgaria (100%) is ranked first.
According to the survey, the structural and cohesion funds available to Romania for the period 2007-2012, amounted EUR 23.53 billion while the contracted projects totaled EUR 16.36 billion, which corresponds to an access rate of 70%. On the other hand, the absorption was 12%, the amount of EUR 2.78 billion was paid to the beneficiaries in the country
Late last year, the highest contraction rate (80%) was registered in the "Human Resources" and "infrastructure" projects , similar to the CEE average. The "Research and Development (R & D), Communications (ITC)" and "Technical Assistance" projects reached a national average absorption rate of 70% and 66%,respectively.
KPMG specialists argue that for the EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe, EU funds are "an essential resource for competitive development and economic growth", which contributed between 11% and 26% to the annual GDP.
The report highlighted that during 2007 - 2012, about EUR 180.9 billion were available for spending to improve economic and social cohesion, the beneficiaries signed contracts totaling EUR 149 billion, which represents over 80% of the allocated budget for the current programming period.
The research conducted by KPMG refers to the 10 New Member States - Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - who joined between 2004 and 2007.
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