The elections are coming and all the resources are thus used with the aim of attracting votes. From this perspective, absolutely unplanned reforms and actions are announced for the purpose of impressing the voters. A proof is the fact that the given actions are taken at the end of mandate and even at the end of fiscal year. The tax reform started on October 1, while the salary reform is to start on December 1. Everything for the benefit of the citizens with the right to vote! And this happens outside the maximally intensified activity of the four (!) charitable foundations affiliated to three parties of the left and the center left.
Against such a background, Minister of Finance Octavian Armașu, in the program “Reply” broadcast by Prime TV channel on October 28, 2018, informed that their ambition is to have the law on the unitary salary system in force as of December 1 this year. This way the first salary at the start of next year will be paid in accordance with the new law. After such statements, anyone can wonder what is the correlation between ambition and law? Ambition is a burning desire, while law is a mandatory norm. Moreover, the minister of finance, who should be very precise in statements, induced more uncertainty than clarity. It is thus not clear if he speaks about a particular law or about a set of laws.
The Ministry of Finance is the key institution responsible for the formulation of the country’s budgetary-financial documents. It should be noted that on April 21, 2018, the Government approved the medium-term budgetary framework (2019-2021). This is the main document based on which the 2019 budget was to be planned. At that moment, the minister of finance couldn’t have known about audacious initiatives that were to be launched by the leader of the Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM), primarily concerning the fiscal and salary reforms. That’s why it seems strange that we have a budgetary framework for the next three years that does not take into account the two mentioned major factors to which one more is added – suspension of the macro-financial assistance by the EU. The question here is what’s the use of this medium-term budgetary framework if it can be adopted without taking into consideration such important factors? Pure magic!
Normally, the audacious party initiatives and the Ministry of Finance’s ambition should have at least a minimum verifiable basis before being announced. In this regard, the authorities do not tell us if the budget for this year will have to be amended in connection with the mentioned reforms that weren’t consulted with the development partners. The authorities also seem to have forgotten the promises made at the start of this year – the 2019 state budget will be adopted in a record period of time so as to show the effects of the implementation of the roadmap in the course of 2016 and 2017. We do not yet know what happened to the final variant of the 2019 draft state budget and when it will be adopted. We know that the Parliament’s mandate expires on November 30 and the Ministry of Finance, in these circumstances, speaks in probabilistic terms about the adoption of the laws concerning the salary reform. It’s clear that the effect of the tax reform are yet to appear. The international experience that was recently invoked by the World Bank Country Manager for Moldova Anna Akhalkatsi does not seem encouraging: “The experience of many countries presents few proofs that would confirm the efficiency of taxing revenues by a common tax against the rise in the number of taxpayers or consolidation of growth”. That’s why it is interesting to know how the Ministry of Finance thought up the budget for 2019?
No one questions the professional capacities of Minister of Finance Octavian Armașu. On the contrary, he is highly appreciated even by critics of the current government. However, the minister of finance seems to have a fault – he does not read the ruling party’s documents. If he had read them, he would have discovered that the PDM’s ambition is to raise the salaries two times per electoral cycle by attracting at least US$ 4 billion (!) per cycle, by US$ 1 billion a year. The minister’s calculations concerning the pay raises are thus interesting: “The minimum level for most of the salary earners next year (2019) will be 1,500 lei. According to our calculations, this level in 2020 could be raised to 1,700 lei, in two years to 1,900. The rise will be of 10% each year… The salary fund is annually augmented by 800,000-900,000 lei. A rise of about 1.3 billion lei will be witnessed next year and the increase in salaries is not something unordinary”. Evidently, these estimates cannot keep pace at least with the PDM’s ambitions for the current electoral cycle, not speaking about the future daring ambitions forth future to which the PDM only alluded in the party’s Great Assembly of October 21, 2018. This can mean that Minister Armașu’s weak point is that he is not yet a member of the PDM.
In conclusion, we can say that the current rulers behave like magicians that use a magic wand and take initiatives and documents of major importance out of the Democratic leader’s hat without showing estimates based on calculations. Obviosity, everything is done for the benefit of the people and the magic wand is used right before the elections. After the elections, the magic wand will most probably be hidden until the next elections and the voters will enter the phase of post-electoral reverberations. It won’t be for the first time. That’s why it is up to the people to decide if they want the periodical succession of the pre-electoral turmoil with post-electoral reverberations to be perpetuated.
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