Austrian oil group OMV has suggested massive downsizing over the next ten years during a meeting with Petrom trade unions, said Liviu Luca, chairman of the Romanian company's Free and Independent Trade Union Federation and of the Association of Employees.
The privatisation contract is scheduled to be signed by Petrom and OMV tomorrow morning, sources involved in the transaction told Ziarul Financiar.
"OMV also suggested, in the medium term, annual investments worth 100 million euros for the modernisation of refining activities, as well as investments of 200 million euros aimed at the company's exploration and production activities. We consider a larger sum is necessary for Petrom's activities. But we told them everything is subject to negotiation, and talks will be held after August 15th," Luca explains.
Petrom has about 57,000 employees, over nine times more than OMV's 6,137 employees. Petrom derived annual turnover standing at 1.9 billion euros and net profit of 38 million euros last year. By comparison, OMV registered net profit worth above 380 million euros, against sales amounting to 7.6 billion euros in 2003.
The layoffs will be correlated with the investment programme to be operated by the Austrians over the next period.
The current labour contract concluded between Petrom management and its employees is deemed as "good" by the head of OMV and is to be applied until the end of this year.
Petrom is the most oversized oil company in Central and Eastern Europe, as its number of employees puts it close to world oil giants such as ConocoPhilips (USA) and LukOil (Russia), British Petroleum (Great Britain) or the Anglo-Dutch group Shell.
Petrom's productivity, calculated as the revenues/number of employees ratio, places the Romanian company at the lower end of top European companies, with an average of 39,000 dollars/employee, as compared to LukOil (Russia) - 120,000 dollars/employee, Rompetrol (Romania) - 220,000 dollars/employee, PKN Orlen (Poland) - 382,000 dollars per employee, MOL (Hungary) - 431,000 dollars/employee, Eni (Italy)- 721,000 dollars per employee, OMV (Austria), with about 1.4 million dollars per employee or the Anglo-Dutch giant with 1.61 million dollars per employee.
"We proposed to the OMV chairman that Petrom spinoffs become involved in some foreign contracts of the Austrian company," stated Economy and Trade Minister Dan Ioan Popescu.
adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro
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