The local public authorities are obliged to provide tax concessions and other benefits to the craftspeople, their organizations and the artistic handicraft enterprises in compliance with the law on people’s handicrafts approved in March 2003. The participants in the five roundtable meetings held as part of the pilot project “Future Visions: Cultural Policy in Moldova from Changes to Viability”, implemented by Soros-Moldova Foundation in cooperation with the European Cultural Foundation based in Amsterdam, say that the major obstacles to practicing handicrafts in the Republic of Moldova are related to the lack of a sales market, the import of raw material, the incorrect assessment of works’ artistic value. The state should assume responsibility and solve these problems, including through the Ministry of Culture, the meeting participants consider. The speakers said that the craftspeople cannot be included in the general category of entrepreneurs without defining the specific features of the handicraft activities. Also, they expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that Moldova does not have yet a mechanism for conferring the Craftsman title, though the works of the Moldovan craftspeople are highly appreciated abroad. The craftspeople in Moldova work in such areas as ceramics, straw knitting, artistic weaving, artistic leather tanning, wood working, crocheting, manufacture of people’s instruments, knitting of vegetable fibers etc. The over 250 craftspeople from part of the Union of Craftsmen of Moldova, which aims at preserving, developing and propagating the artistic handicraft.