On Friday, January 19, as part of a seminar held by the World Bank (WB), experts from six European countries, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Canada shared with Moldova their experience in improving the efficiency of the strategic allocation of financial resources in the context of working out the National Development Plan of Moldova for 2008-2011. WB expert Svetlana Proskurovska stated that such a support is extremely beneficial to Moldova, not just to copy any model, but to have success and avoid the failures on the way towards the country’s development. WB Country Director Paul Bermingham said this seminar is very important in the context of NDP, formulated by the Government following the Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (EGPRSP), which was a very ambitious strategy, and had greater objectives than the available financial resources. Bermingham stressed the necessity to improve the strategic allocation of resources, especially in the context of the donor community’s commitments to provide for Moldova over one billion dollars. Minister of Economy and Commerce Igor Dodon said that EGPRSP was one of the Government’s first attempts to set the costs of the actions taken for each sector apart, to mobilise budgetary internal sources in order to ensure the reforms in different sectors. Though the EGPRSP was qualified by Moldova’s partners as a qualitative document regarding the strategic planning, Dodon recognised that after two years there were certain difficulties to implement it. Firstly, it is about the limited capacities of the authorities of local and central public administration when implementing these reforms in the sectors, as well as the monitoring of this process. The lack of financial resources has created big problems. Also, Dodon mentioned that the correlation between the EGPRSP documents concerning the strategic planning and the medium term expenditure Framework (MTEF) enjoyed a great success either. A number of priorities set in EGPRSP or in MTEF have been often totally different; while the other priorities included in the Strategy were not reflected in MTEF and, therefore, in the annual budgets approved by the Parliament. Just these problems are to be excluded when working out the NDP, a process that started in early January. The Plan will be worked out throughout this year in three stages. The concept of NDP will be presented in late February, while the first stage will last till April, 2007, and intends to find the general priorities of NDP. In April-August there will be made estimates related to the carrying out of the Plan, determining the internal and external financial sources afterwards. The final stage for completing and approving the NDP will be carried out in September-October 2007, a period when a national Forum will be held. There the NDP will be open for final debates. In late October it will be presented to the Parliament for consideration.