Galati County

[ Short History | Geographical Outline | Touristic Information | Economy Profile ]

Galati county is blessed with a mild climate and is rich in natural resources. Proof of its being a congenial haven is provided by the finds of archaeological diggings attesting to the existence of human settlements dating back to the Paleolithic. Located on the European trade routes, the settlement at Mile 80 on the Danube is millennial-old. The Geto-Dacian stronghold that had been raised in the hearth where the Siret flows into the Danube was turned by the Romans into a military castrum and a civilian settlement. It was the hub that radiated the Roman civilization farther into Moldavia and the northern Black Sea regions. For centuries, the area was crossed up and down by the Greek and Roman trade routes. The consolidation of the statal authority in Moldavia in the 15th century blossomed the port-town of Galati into an important economic and trading centre – Romania ’s only free harbour for many centuries.

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Geographical Outline

Situated in the east-central part of the country, at the mouth of the Danube, the Siret and the Prut, Galati county extends over a 4,466 sq km. area or 1.9% of Romania’s surface. There are four urban settlements – two big cities, Galati and Tecuci, and two towns, Beresti and Targu Bujor, and fifty-six communes with one hundred and eighty villages. A touch area of the Covurlui tableland to the North (50% of county area), the Tecuci and the Covurlui plains (34%), the Lower Siret and the Prut meadows (16%) to the South, the county has a coherent physical and geographical configuration. On January 1, 1996, the population size was 643,000 persons or 2.8% of the country’s total population (9th county in terms of population size): 50.1% male and 49.9% female; 60.4% urban and 39.6% rural population. As regards population density, Galati county – 145 inhabitans/sq km. – comes third at all-country level. Its seat – Galati – is the country’s 5th largest town (329,300 inhabitants) and the biggest port situated on the ma-ritime Danube; it is 80 miles off the Black Sea shore and about 250 km. far from Bucharest, Romania’s capital city, Iasi, Ploiesti, Buzau, Constanta, Chisinau (Republic of Moldavia) and Odessa (Ukraine). Galati county is part of the South-East Development Region (also including Vrancea, Buzau, Braila, Constanta and Tulcea counties), of the Lower Danube EuroRegion (along with the southern districts of the Republic of Moldavia and the Ukrainean western districts), and of Galati-Giurgiulesti-Reni Free Economic Zone.

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Touristic Information

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Economy Profile

Taking industrial output as indicator, Galati county is Romania’s 4th biggest industrial centre. Structurally, the picture of major economic branches looks like this:
    • industry and constructions – 43%;
    • services – 38%;
    • agriculture, silviculture, forest exploitation – 19%.
    The output structure per industrial sectors is shown here below.
Galati metallurgy supplies 55.6% of Romania’s steel production, 55% as regards rolled products, and 90.4% cold-rolled sheets and strips. Over 50% of the metallurgical products are exported.     Shipbuilding, a traditional industry here, supplies river- and sea-going ships of up to 65,000 dwt. (containerships, bulk carriers, ore carriers, tug boats and oil tankers) as well as off-shore drilling rigs. Galati is one of the country’s biggest connection which is linked to the major European transport corridors; it is a link for the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal going from the North Sea to the Black Sea; it is a railway junction capable to provide for transfer from the European rail-gauge standards to the larger rail gauge of CIS countries; the network of national and county roads crosses far-and-wide the county. The port-town of Galati on the banks of the Danube has four harbours (one for passenger transport and three for cargo) with wharves along about 6.5 km.-long distance that can accommodate ships of up 30,000 dwt. (max. 7.3 m. draught). Overall, the harbours can handle 9,328,857 t. of goods and commodities carried by ship (1997 figure).

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