The 2016 state budget hasn’t been yet adopted. It is the longest delay witnessed in the past 20 years. This fact reduces significantly its importance in terms of the public policies that are to be implemented this year. Therefore, the adoption of the draft budget becomes rather a formal task that must be dealt with as soon as possible, said projects coordinator at the Independent Analytical Center “Expert-Grup” Dumitru Budeanschi, who analyzed the draft budget law published by the Ministry of Finance, IPN reports.

“Most probably, the presented draft budget law will be adjusted following the approval of the measures stipulated in the budgetary–fiscal policy. Now that the National Bank of Moldova reviewed down its inflation forecast for 2016 (from 10.1% to 7.0%), the Ministry of Finance will have to take this change into consideration as it substantially affects the reasoning for adjusting some of the taxes,” said the expert.

Dumitru Budeanschi noted that in accordance with the forecasts based on which the budget for 2016 was drafted, the fiscal burden remains practically at the level of 2015. Thus, the incomes from taxes and contributions expressed as share of the GDP in 2016 will represent 31.98%, up 0.17 percentage points on 2015. The expenditure of the national public budget in 2016 will rise by 6.3 billion lei or 13.6% on 2015. Expressed as percentage of the GDP, this will increase to 39.5%, which is the same level as in Estonia last year, but higher than the level in Latvia (37.2%), Romania (35.5%), Ireland (35.1%), and Lithuania (35.1%). The average level in the EU in 2015 was 47.4% of the GDP.

This year the incomes and spending of the national public budget are forecast to grow by about 11.1% and, respectively, 13.6% on last year. The deficit is thus expected to be of about 3.2%. It will be covered with financial resources obtained from privatization and state securities and with foreign loans of about 6.7 billion lei, 2.7 billion of which will go to finance projects. Such a significant dependence on external funds is very risky in the current conditions, stated the expert.