* State aid of 8 million Euros for the hiring of 100 workers
* The new factory will manufacture micro-irrigation factory for produce markets
American firm The Toro Company (NYSE: TTC) yesterday inaugurated an irrigation equipment factory in the private industrial park Ploieşti West Park. The company has received 8 million Euros in state aid for the jobs which it will create by 2013. The investment amounts to approximately 20 million Euros. The plant will initially have 35 employees, and their number will reach 100 by 2013.
When asked whether the amount of 80,000 Euros for each new job created by the American company wasn"t a bit steep, Prime Minister Emil Boc, who was present at the inauguration, said that the aid will be recouped out of the taxes paid by the company and that this kind of aid has been offered to other major companies which invested in Romania as well. He said that the state aid offered to these companies is in compliance with an agreement with the European Union.
The Prime Minister added that the Romanian government has granted more than 280 million Euros in aids to "over 11 investors", Mediafax says. The chairwoman of the House of Deputies, Roberta Anastase, who attended the inauguration of the Toro plant, said that the aid granted to the company would be recouped in five years.
The Ploieşti factory will manufacture micro-irrigation products for vegetable farmers, owners of agricultural farmland, orchards and vineyards in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (the EMEA region). Furthermore, this project will also supplement the output capacity of the Toro plant in Rome, Italy. The new plant, which has a surface of 12,900 sqm, will place the Toro company closer to the EMEA market, which is growing, and where micro-irrigation is gaining ground in the irrigated agriculture sector. "This plant is part of the strategic invest
