The upcoming general local elections will cost the state budget at least 154 million lei. The amount was announced by Angela Caraman, president of the Central Electoral Commission, according to whom the money has already been transferred to the institution’s account, and if needed, additional funds will be disbursed for the second round.

Angela Caraman says the CEC is trying to make savings, opting only for centralized purchases.

“We have an estimated budget, because when we are in the procurement process, we also make savings. We estimated the costs for both rounds at 178 million lei. We received 154 million lei on the CEC accounts, and if in the second round we don’t fit within this amount, we will request the difference. The fact is that we have already made savings. We purchased supplies for all electoral councils in a centralized manner. We made a centralized purchase and saved over a million lei”, said Angela Caraman during a show on Vocea Basarabiei.

She added that there is an increased demand from national and international observers to monitor these elections. By the law, representatives of civil society organizations, training and research institutions in the electoral field can be accredited as observers. Representatives of electoral authorities from abroad, international organizations, foreign governments and non-governmental organizations, as well as international experts can also monitor elections.

“We already have 1000 national observers and almost 150 international observers registered, but we still have requests in this regard. We welcome the interest of observers who will tell us objectively how the process was organized, especially since we have many new rules of the Electoral Code to implement and we want to know how well we managed to implement them”, said the president of the Central Electoral Commission.

During the general local elections, 898 mayors and over 11 thousand local councilors are to be elected. According to CEC data, 57,396 candidates for the position of mayor and councilor in local councils from 35 political parties and one electoral bloc, as well as 1,174 independent candidates, were registered for the November 5 elections.