Minister of the Environment Sergiu Palihovici and director of the Kiev Office of Germanys’ KfW (Reconstruction Credit Institute) Gunnar Wälzholz on March 13 signed a financing agreement to the value of €730,000 between the Ministry of the Environment and the German Financial Corporation for the feasibility study to extend the Chisinau-Straseni-Calarasi aqueduct, IPN reports.

A feasibility study for extending the aqueduct will be carried out in cooperation with foreign experts. Afterward, there will be designed and built pipelines to 20 villages of Chisinau municipality, Straseni town and Calarasi town.

Sergiu Palihovici said the agreement signed with the German partners will help solve the water supply problem and will ensure the access to drinking water of the people living in Straseni and Calarasi districts, according to the sanitary norms. After the water main is built and the settlements are connected to the local water supply systems, an institution will be created to manage the water supply systems in Chisinau, Straseni and Calarasi.

The document signed in Chisinau contains the tasks of the sides involved and the steps that are to be taken to implement this major project that was included in the Water Supply and Sanitation Strategy for 2014-2018. The Government of Moldova and the Government of Germany set this project as a priority of the bilateral cooperation during the Moldovan-German negotiations held in Chisinau last June. 

KfW is a leader on the banking sector of Germany. Present in Moldova since 1999, the bank finances mainly social infrastructure and financial sector development projects.