Staff policy up to Petrom's investor

Economy Minister Dan Ioan Popescu on Monday said the State will not require the investor taking over SNP Petrom to keep a specific number of employees. Petrom is currently employing 58,000 people and estimates to post 2bn euro turnover this year. As a comparison, Rompetrol Group employs 5,600 people and made $1.2bn turnover in 2003. British Petroleum has a staff of 103,000 and makes $232bn revenues a year while Chevron Texaco makes $100bn a year with 53,000 people. “There have been personnel-related talks. I am against setting a number of employees. We will impose no such restructuring restrictions to our investors. A possible Petrom restructuring will be debated along with the investment volume and be correlated with the company’s development strategy,” Popescu specified. ZF