Monitoring→Public Institutions→Government

Appointments

The Government has proposed the appointment of Mrs. Larisa Miculet as Moldovan Ambassador to Israel, while the chief of state signed a decree in this respect on December 28, 2005. Larisa Miculet had graduated from higher legal education. She worked in the prosecutor’s office bodies starting 1979. She represented Moldova in the Stability Pact for South-East Europe Initiative (combat of organised crime field) starting 2001. In 2001, she bided for the office of lawmaker as part of the list of the electoral bloc Braghis Alliance.

The posts of Moldovan ambassador to Romania and permanent representative of Moldova to the Geneva-based U.N. office (Swiss Confederation) are vacant at present.

Decisions

• Decision on approval of the action plan of the Government for the 1st trimester of 2006. The document stipulates:
  • the approval of several national programmes and strategies (on education, state investment policies, electronic communications, etc.) in the period concerned;
  • working out of some draft legislative documents (on small- and medium-sized enterprises, mediation in civil causes, support for regional development; general security of products);
  • adoption of some draft normative documents (on technical expertise in constructions, land cadastre of state, model regulation of institutions of higher learning and scientific research, regulation on activity of diplomatic personnel in charge with commercial-economic relations);
  • analysis of activity of certain fields (multilateral negotiations within WTO, implementation of export promotion strategy, implementation of EGPRSP, Moldova-E.U. Action Plan, cooperation with the Council of Europe, etc.).

• Decision on approval of the strategy on reform of central public administration in the Republic of Moldova. The strategy contains several chapters on conceptual framework of the reform; principles of public administration reform; goal, objectives and subjective of the reform; components of reform; expected results; eventual risks of implementation of central public administration reform; monitoring of implementation. At the same time, the strategy implementation plan was approved and it contains the outlined objectives, planned actions, responsible authorities and terms for accomplishment. The information of participating subjects about execution of the strategy implementation plan will be presented to the reform coordination unit every trimester.

• Decision on the rise of salaries of teachers and employees of social facilities. The decision calls for the rise of salaries of teachers (by 40 percent) starting December 1, 2005, of personnel from kindergartens and schools, sanitary facilities, social assistance facilities, science, art, sport, and other budgetary facilities (by 20–60 percent on average), of military (by 30 percent starting January 1). The new rises will not be effective for specialised personnel subordinated to the Parliament, Government and President, nor for judges and prosecutors. The decision was adopted because of delayed enactment of the new law on salaries in budgetary sector and as a result of pressures of teachers who threatened to go in for strikes. Teachers from several districts said after adoption of this law that the rise would not improve the situation and a system of indexation of salaries in dependence of growth of the minimum of existence is needed.

• Decision on approval of the draft law on amendment of the law on mode of introduction and withdrawal of goods from Moldova by individuals. The Government proposes to allow citizens to withdraw up to 10,000 euros from Moldova without the permit of the National Bank of Moldova, as well as to introduce unlimited currency in the Republic of Moldova. At the same time, the legislation keeps the present provision on obligation to verbally declare currency introduced in country at customs stations, if the amount is not larger than 200 euros, as well as written declaration, if the introduced amount exceeds the indicated value. If citizens do not declare currency while entering the country, many penal causes are issued, invoking the committing of the crime stipulated by Article 248 of the Penal Code — Smuggling (which is punished with a fine between 150 and 300 conventional units or jail term of up to two years, while a legal entity pays a fine between 1,000 and 3,000 conventional units and it is deprived of the right to exert certain activity).

• Decision on activity of the Centre for the Struggle Against Economic Crimes and Corruption (CCCEC) for the implementation of the action plan on implementation of the national strategy on the prevention and combat of corruption. The executive established that the centre has filed 500 penal cases in ten months of 2005, including 316 (63 percent) related to corruption and 151 (30 percent) to economic-financial offences, while the damage in these penal cases is estimated at about 251 million lei (19.5 million dollars). The governmental decision does not contain data on the number of cases delivered to court, nor on cases examined by courts, solutions to these cases, while some data show that more than 30 million lei was raised to the 2005 budget due to measures taken by CCCEC. At the same time, the Government established the need to intensify in continuation the actions of prevention and combat of corruption, to enhance responsibility of public administration institutions in implementing the national strategy on the prevention and combat of corruption, to increase the transparency of their activity, including in relations with mass media. The centre was told to intensify the activities aimed to detect corruption-related actions of high-ranking officials and to implement a complex system of actions of cooperation with nongovernmental organisations and other representative groups of civil society by increasing the anti-corruption education of population.

• Decision on approval of the programme on water providing and sewerage services for localities in the Republic of Moldova until 2015. The decision is adopted with the purpose to restore and develop drinking water providing and sewerage systems, to provide some services of good quality to consumers, to solve problems related to reasonable use and maintenance of water resources. This programme contains estimates of current state of systems of water providing installations, reserves of exploitation of underground waters and their quality, as well as volume of works needed for modernisation and development. The amounts for implementation of this programme are estimated at over 5 billion lei (about 390 million dollars).

• Decision on the approval of the draft law on principles and mechanism of regulation of entrepreneurial activity. The draft approved by executive seeks the institution of some new regulations on entrepreneurial activity, so that the Parliament and Government be able to establish regulations for entrepreneurs. Other administrative authorities that will need new regulations will have to work them out and to present them to the Government for approval. This draft aims to introduce stable and transparent regulations on business, to limit the departmental interests that often create some useless obstacles in activity of entrepreneurs. The same draft proposes the introduction of some restrictions for abusive controls on economic activity, establishing that nobody can be controlled except for facts comprising elements of an offence or administrative contravention. The new law aims to continue and to deepen the process of liberalisation and deregulation introduced through the so-called “guillotine law”, while the final goal of authorities is to encourage private initiative in business and to contribute to the rise of the number of employees, to extend the taxable economic base this way.

• Decision on the approval of the draft law on amendment of the law on patent of entrepreneur. The Government proposes a 30-percent reduction of the price of the patent of entrepreneur, with the condition that holders will pay state social insurance taxes individually. At present, holders of patents of entrepreneur in the Chisinau municipality must pay monthly taxes of between 30 and 600 lei, and these taxes are two-fold lower in rural localities. These single monthly taxes for patent include the income tax, tax for use of natural resources, tax for commercial facilities, territorial arrangement tax, tax for the right to provide passenger transportation services, as well as taxes to the state social insurance budget. Many experts estimate that the revenues collected by holders of patents exceed the paid taxes very much and a very small part of the real revenue goes to the social insurance budget, unlike the tax raised from salary or other entrepreneurial activity than the ones based on patent. Taking into account the fact that the social insurance system in Moldova is based on solidarity of contributions, the idea promoted by Government seems to follow pragmatic enough goals — though it is announced as a facility, this measure may turn into a heavier burden for payer.

Sittings. Decisions. Statements

• Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev has ordered the creation of a coordinating council to monitor the elaboration and implementation of projects on use of regenerating resources, which will be headed by Gheorghe Duca, chairman of the Moldovan Academy of Sciences. The planned activities call for identification of alternative energy sources through use of technical potential of solar, biomass, wind and water regenerating resources, choosing the projects with a high technical performance and optimal relation between expenditures and benefit. The council will also be in charge with drafting, promoting and implementing projects on production of vegetal fuel (from rape, sugar sorghum) for internal combustion engines.

• The Economic Council of the executive was convoked for a summary sitting and summarised the annual activities. The consultative body took notice of over 250 draft decisions and initiatives of the executive regarding economic activity, held the forum of businessmen within which the leadership discussed with representatives of domestic business. Expressing satisfaction with the activity of the council, the prime minister solicited its members to draft an action plan on struggle against contraband and liberalisation of shadow economy.

• The Government has started implementing a pilot project in several areas of the republic, in a move to test the new mechanism of awarding of normative compensations, based on the principle of checking of the level of need of social assistance. The project will be launched in the districts of Soroca, Orhei and Leova, as well as in the Rascani district of the Chisinau municipality in February 2006 and aims to choose the best method of granting assistance to socially needy people by testing some methods of selection of beneficiaries of normative compensations on basis of evaluation of overall revenue of the family. The social assistance system includes several types of compensations (13), and most of them are awarded on basis of the principle of category, without evaluation of incomes and real material condition of beneficiary families.

• The Government released a communique on January 2, 2006, on negotiations between the Moldovan delegation and the joint stock society Gazprom, after an extraordinary sitting that discussed the crisis that Moldova faced after the Russian Federation has stopped providing natural gas. It said that the Government has tried to negotiate with decision-making officials from the Russian Federation in the last two months of 2005, in a move to establish the market price of natural gas supplied to Moldova, but these negotiations failed. The executive indicated its stance at negotiations, outlining the factors that determine the standpoint of Moldova in this issue: ownership of the control package in the joint stock society Moldova-Gaz by Gazprom; conduct of a joint business and payment for entire current consumption; awarding of preferences for payment of VAT and rent taxes; payment of a 80-dollar price per 1,000 cubic metres by Moldova starting 1996. The Government concludes that the problem of Russian gas price has an exclusively political motivation (deviating from the stance of President Voronin on this topic this way), but it wants to continue the negotiations with Russian colleagues.

• Vasile Tarlev said that businesses “do not have ground to increase the prices of drugs,” after most of pharmaceutical products became by about 8 percent dearer on January 1. According to the premier, the price rise is speculative and the executive will work out mechanisms to control the quality of these products and to regulate the mode of creation of their prices. On the other hand, importers and producers of drugs motivate the price rises through introduction of an 8-percent VAT on pharmaceutical products in early 2006 and raw material imported for production of drugs in Moldova. The imminence of price rise was also indicated when the Parliament has examined these laws, but the executive argued the need to introduce the VAT through rise of evidence, affirming at the same time that the measures of authorities would not allow higher prices in connection with the growth of VAT.

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