Over the past cold season, the Government provided 3.4 billion lei in energy bill relief for households of the planned 5.8 billion lei. This was announced by Alexei Buzu, Minister of Labor and Social Protection, during a press club event.

A total of 763,000 applied for relief. A whopping 66% were assigned a very high energy vulnerability rating, meaning they spent over 90% of their income on energy bills.

A high vulnerability rating was assigned to households which spent 35%-90% of their total income on energy bills; a spending of 15-35% meant a medium vulnerability rating; under 15% qualified as low vulnerability; and households paying less than 10% of their total income on energy bills didn’t qualify for relief at all.
 
UNDP provided analytical support to conceptualize the Energy Vulnerability Reduction Fund. According to Andrea Cuzyova, Deputy Resident Representative of UNDP Moldova, an impact analysis showed that the energy relief scheme had a significant general effect on reducing poverty. For households with a very high vulnerability rating, the proportion decreased by 43%. Also, the relief offered did not lead to an increase in consumption, although there are certain differences by vulnerability category.

Dan Perciun, chair or Parliament’s Social Protection Commission, said that in the future we want a compensation system as fair as possible, meaning that the most vulnerable should benefit from higher compensations. Two more categories of vulnerability will be added so that the poorest benefit from higher compensation. At the same time, changes regarding the status of family members are to be approved. Families with children or people with disabilities will be taken into account, as well as the residence environment. Another objective is to check credit history.

Work will be done to increase the quality of the data for each household, reducing fraud and increasing the quality of the information entered into the system; eliminate duplication with other similar support measures; automate processes and reduce waiting time for applications.