Two parliamentary commissions – the commission on economy, budget and finance and the commission on agriculture and food industry – reached the conclusion that the mechanism proposed by the Government for distributing the assistance loan providing by the Polish Government is not functional. By a decision taken in hearings staged on July 5, the commissions request the Government to work out a viable mechanism for implementing the agreement within 15 days, IPN reports.

Chairman of the commission on economy, budget and finance Stefan Creanga said otherwise a debate on the parliamentary platform will be needed to consider the necessity of this accord. The MPs who attended the hearings said the long-awaited Polish loan caused headaches to Moldovan farmers. Some of them got into a serious trap.

Svetlana Staver, project manager for a number of companies that tried to purchase equipment with money from the Polish loan, said after the applications were accepted, the companies were informed that they have to pay 5% of the value of the collected amount. Some of them paid the 5% of sums that rose to €300,000. However, a year after the transfer, the machinery hasn’t been delivered and the Polish producers invoke additional costs.

The representative of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry said the Ministry does not manage this loan. Initially, there were working groups that authorized these projects and the works started. But later the Government transferred the duty to manage the loan from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Finance. Moreover, the contract was renegotiated and the value of the loan was decreased from €100 million to €50 million.

Minister of Finance Octavian Armasu accused Moldovan business entities of not being attentive. According to him, the 5% wasn’t stipulated in the contract. The companies that made transfers should assume the risks. After the agreement was signed in May 2014 and was later ratified by Parliament, this took effect in August 2014. But no move was made until March-April 2016 and the loan was fully blocked given that no appropriate implementation formula was identified. To unblock the loan, several applications were selected in 2016 and sent to the Polish side. These were accepted, but the state signed no agreement with these companies. The authorities only sent the files to the Polish side and have no obligations towards these companies.

In 2014, the Government of Poland decided to allocate a loan of €100 million to the Republic of Moldova, but later asked for the renegotiation of the lending agreement and the loan was halved. Under the agreement, Moldovan agricultural companies will be able to purchase equipment for developing and modernizing their businesses. The contracts were to be signed by Polish entrepreneurs and Moldovan business entities.