The noncommercial organizations in Moldova, especially the public associations, have a low financial viability owing to their excessive dependence on foreign grants. Such a conclusion was reached by international organizations. They yet said that the sustainability of the NGO sector in Moldova is developing, the most significant progress being made in such areas as advocacy and public image, IPN reports.

According to a press release of Transparency International Moldova, though the legislation on the creation and management of public associations is permissive, it is not favorable as regards their financing from public money and does not encourage philanthropy and sponsorship on the part of economic entities.

The partisanship and political bias of some public associations are considered a serious problem of the NGO sector. The low transparency of organizations and the ethics- and integrity-related shortcomings reduce the government capacities of this sector. As to the responsibility of organizations in terms of accounting, fulfillment of the fiscal obligations and financial reporting, the representatives of civil society note especially the lack of national accounting standards for NGOs and the difficult financial reporting, similar to that of economic entities.

The public associations tend to be more active partners in the cooperation with public authorities and increase the efforts to monitor and assess anticorruption policies, but the shortage of specialists and funds affects these activities. The people’s confidence in public associations is low. According to the Public Opinion Barometer, the number of respondents who have confidence in them fell from 34% in November 2009 to 21.6% in November 2013. This is due to their insufficient transparency and the people’s higher expectations of them.

Transparency International Moldova recommends encouraging the practices of making public associations more transparent and of increasing their integrity by promoting and adopting the Ethics Code of NGOs and working out a mechanism for implementing it, including creating the Ethics Council. The donors should support the initiatives aimed at increasing the transparency and integrity of associations, especially by stipulating conditions to make the information about their activity public in the grant agreements.