The opinions regarding the fate of this companies vary. There are some opinions which state that these companies will disappear or at least, they will greatly diminish their activity, but there are also some voices that they say they will accomodate.

"It is too early to affirm what will happen, as not enough time has passed since the integration in the E.U., in order to notice a certain trend. In any case, I belive that if they do not direct themselves some place else, they will most surely dissapear" believes, Marian Neacsu, general manager of the Focus Group shipment company.

This proves that 80% of the activity held by the custom agents was for the E.U. countries. Another activity which was also a means of getting some income, but which does not meet our new state of being a member of the E.U., was the custom statements, which were done for cars brought from abroad – adds Neascu. According to the activity done by agents, it was all done how “they pleased”, but from now on, the European Methodology must be wholly obeyed.

Although Bucur Florin, the chief of the custom service in Slatina of Transexim 96 says that, however, there will be work to be done for the goods coming from outside E.U. He sustains this by affirming that the taxes for these types of goods have significantly decreased.

“It may be clearly observed that the Romanian importers have the tendency to direct their attention to countries that are not EU members. There are plenty of imports from China, Bulgaria and Bangladesh - says Bucur. “Personally, I cannot believe that the custom commissionaires will disappear, because there will still be a lot to do for them. Certainly, if they do not carry on working only on the community’s goods and them already being a few, then they will disappear.” – The official of Transexim ends.

The shipment companies feel the decrease in the profit

One way to survive would be an association for making some transport companies. However, the problem would be that these companies also register a profit decrease. The reason would be the significant increase in the transportation fees – especially, the road ones – as well as in the harsh competition on the market.

“The carters’ prices have greatly increased” – Andrei Vasilescu said, transport operator for Trans Romania International. “Many times we do transports in loss, only for “catching” the client” – states vasilescu. The problem of gaining some goes like this: one does many transports for one client for a whole year and eventually, they will gain something.

“The competition made us decrease the intermediary commissions for the road transports. This, together with the increase itself in the price of the products has made us get to a profit ratio of 15% and the trend is a decrease one.” – Declared Ion Crangasu, from Transexim ’96. As with regards to the price required to the traffic of goods, over the past year, this has registered due to the high required by the carters, as well as to the decrease itself in Romania’s volume of exported goods.

However, (Crangasu continues) this drop is counterbalanced by the increase in the volume of goods from imports, as well as by enormous advance payment taken by the sea transporters for the containers, especially from Asia. The new state of Romania, that of member of E.U., brings along an “aflux” of goods from the community’s country, especially electronic products, which will greatly cheapen, due to the elimination  of the custom taxes.

According to Vasilescu, in this sense, the most advantaged wil be the expedition (transportation) companies, which have their own custom warehouse, because the community goods will get rid of the custom fees. For exports, the most problematic goods will be the agricultural ones or those of animal provenance, which will need to fulfill all the norms and have all the phytosanitary  certificates, required by the EU – says Crangasu.

In order to open a serious expedition (transport) company, one must have available – according to Marian Neascu, from Focus Group – their own  warehouses, custom subsidiary, fleet, as well as accessories – diesel or electric forklift trucks, working ramps, all of what goes up to an investment of euros 300,000.00. The activity aim of a forwarded (transport) company is to ensure services of internal and international transportation of goods (through trucks, partial loading and groupings) and adjacent services (customs, storage, manipulation, distribution).

The share of the transport with the truck increased

In order to transport merchandise to the client that asked for it a transport operator has several variants: by air, by train and seagoing of fluvial. As the transport by air is very expensive and limited from the point of view of transported quantity of merchandise, seagoing one is pretty slow and the fluvial one is pretty unsafe the suitable variant to carry the merchandise to the client remains the road one.

“Although it’s more expensive the client prefers to pay something more to have the merchandise on time rather than to have it arrived with delays or even in bad shape so he cannot use it.” Bucur explains. According to him, lately, a significant increase is observed in the share of the truck transport, we can say normal, considering that within EU, the most used means of transport is this one (almost 44%). The most used means of access from Romania for the trade with community merchandise are customs: Bors, Nadlac and Varsant.