The splitting of Sudan - into Northern and Southern Sudan - which was recently decided in a referendum, could cause Romania to lose 170 million dollars.
After Iraq, Sudan is Romania"s second largest historical debtor, on which it has claims from foreign trades and other operations which took place before December 31st, 1989.
Data from the Ministry of Public Finance (MFP), which were remitted to our editors upon request, show that, on December 31st, 2010, Sudan owed Romania 169,858,286.14 dollars and 881,325 pound sterling.
Sudan"s debt accounts for about 14% of the total inventory of Romania"s foreign trade receivable (in dollars) that Romania needs to collect from its trade relations it had with Sudan under the communist regime, which amount to approximately 1.25 billion dollars. Romania also has to recover an additional 1.23 billion transferable rubles from Cuba.
The division of Sudan into two distinct countries poses a new problem: which one of the two newly recognized states will acknowledge the country"s foreign debt that is owed to Romania and which one will be open to negotiation with us?
The situation will get even more difficult, considering that so far, Romanian authorities had enough trouble in reaching a consensus with Sudan before its secession.
The officials of the Ministry of Finance stated for our newspaper that recovering Sudan"s debt was made harder by the major economic, financial and currency troubles that the country is going through, as well as by the fact that Sudan is included in the categories of "countries affected by conflicts" and of "post conflict countries".
When asked by "BURSA" on what the Romanian authorities should do in this situation, PDL senator Iulian Urban, who is an expert in debt collection, had the following to say: "The authorities will need to begin negotiations with both countries
