The depositors of the Moldova Banca de Economii (BEM) born in 1940, who will submit requests for registration until 1 November 2006, will be included in 2006 in the list of the beneficiaries of indexation. This decision was approved on Wednesday 18 October by the Council of Ministers. The deadline for submitting requests was extended in connection with requests in process belonging to the depositors born in 1939, and because of limited financial means intended for these purposes in the State Budget Law for 2006 (65 mln lei). According to Minister of Finance Mihai Pop, the sum of financial means for the payment of depositors’ indexation at the first stage wouldn’t be totally exhausted and could have comprised about 55 mln lei, or 85% of the considered sum. According to the preliminary data of BEM, in the period of 9 September 2005 – 30 August 2006, there were registered about 57 thousand depositors, with the total sum indexed to the first thousand of rubles in the amount of 52.7 mln lei: inclusively for depositors born before 1939 – 46.8 mln MDL, and for depositors born in 1940 – 5.9 mln MDL. This year, according to a Government decision from February 2006 regarding the approval of the age category of the BEM depositors for the payment of indexation sum in 2006, is intended to be paid the indexation at the first stage for the depositors born before 1939 inclusively. In addition to the situation from 1 October, 2006, the Ministry of Finance transferred 45.3 mln MDL to BEM for these payments. According to the legislative provisions, the rate of 1 ruble against 1 MDL will be applied to recover the first thousand of rubles of the cumulative deposits from all the accounts held by an individual. The trade balance that exceeds one thousand rubles will be indexed 1 MDL against 2.5 RUB. The payment of the indexed sums will be performed in stages, according to the limits stipulated in the Budget Law for the respective year, depending on the depositors’ birth year. Initially, there were 1 mln 988 thousand accounts and deposits of 4 bln 137.3 mln rubles. Subsequently, after the Banca de Economii made a revaluation of the accounts, taking into account the indexation in 1995-1997, their number reduced to 1 mln 298 thousand, and the sum from the accounts – up to 2 bln 731 mln rubles. 18% of the account holders have not successors and in case they die before recovering the indexed sums, their accounts will be closed. At the same time, about 300 thousand of depositors lost the citizenship of the Republic of Moldova, and another 500 thousand had deposits up to one thousand rubles in 1992. After putting into circulation the Moldovan Leu (MDL), on 29 November 1993, and the liberalization of prices, personal deposits have devaluated over one thousand times.