From 2018 to 2021, the historical debts of the water utility Apa-Canal Chisinau increased from 221 to 575 million lei. A large part of them are debts to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank, which exceeded 512 million lei as of 2021. In four years, Apa-Canal Chisinau spent more than 160 million lei to repay loans plus interest to by these banks.
Europa Liberă studied dozens of financial and audit reports from the last seven years to see how the municipal utility ended up in this dire situation. The former director Irina Gutnic admits that the loans taken out in 2013 brought the company into a difficult financial situation. Last year, she said that such loans should be concluded at the level of the Government or, at least, at the level of the municipality, and not directly by the utility. The terms imposed by the banks could not be observed by the company. First of all, because one condition concerns tariff adjustment, which is out of the utility’s power.
The main reason why these expenses cannot be justified is the fact that many investment projects have not yet been put into operation, several former members of the utility’s board of directors explained in a discussion with Europa Liberă.
Apă-Canal Chișinău borrowed 56 million euros or over one billion lei from EBRD and EIB. With this money, the utility was to provide its response teams with modern equipment, which would have helped in the rapid detection and removal of leaks, and to modernize its infrastructure.
According to the company’s reports, from 2016 to 2021, it succeeded in rehabilitating only 154 kilometers of pipes, which is 2.53% of the total length of pipes it manages or 5.04% of those networks management expenses which can be included in the tariff. In just 2 years (2017-2018), the number of breakdowns and instances of leakage from water and sewage networks reached 46,692 cases.
Over the years, breakdowns and leaks have been a headache not only for consumers, but also for businesses. From 2017 to 2021, Apă-Canal Chișinău lost more than 1.1 billion lei in revenue due to leaks. The latest published audit report, for 2021, questions the company’s ability to continue operating, notes Europa Liberă.
