Chinese Investors in Jiu Valley

A group of investors from China will be visiting the Jiu Valley these days to identify investment opportunities in the mining sector. Establishing a long term partnership in this field would provide the industry in the region with new opportunities, especially since the mining subsidies will have to cease in seven years.

The National Coal Company remains the principal debtor to the state budget and the possibility of closing down several mines and making collective redundancies creates new social problems in an area already so poor.

The discussions the economic delegation from China had with the National Coal Company representatives focused on the modernization of mining, but also on storing and using the gas from mines, especially since two of the Chinese delegation members were specialists in this field. On the other hand, the Chinese investors scheduled other meetings with the local authorities in the Jiu Valley in order to identify investment opportunities in the area.

The economic delegation was formed by representatives of the Ministry of Economy of China, who has shown its willingness to invest in Romanian mining, but also representatives of China Huadian Engineering, a state company that is mainly involved in manufacturing heavy machinery, developing technologies for water treatment and environmental protection, generating energy from unconventional sources, but also in constructing power plants.

Local authorities, who encourage foreign investment, but also the Company’s representatives, who by establishing a large public-private partnership could continue the coal extraction even after 2018, when the subsidies for this sector will have ended, have put all their faith in the meetings with the Chinese investors.

On the other hand, the current context is unfavorable for miners, since the nearly 9 000 employees of the National Coal Company have been working under a collective employment contract that has been extended countless times in the past three years and the Company now has no budget revenues and expenditures.

Moreover, for a few days people have been officially talking about new massive layoffs in the Jiu Valley, and despite the compensatory payments, the social protection measures accompanying the collective redundancies have not been effective so far. Whether Romania will go into partnership with Chinese investors or not and the effects of this partnership on a Jiu Valley festered by social issues remain a mystery.


Translated by: Iulia Florescu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University