The financial reports of the Competition Council offer a real picture of financial situation of the institution, shows the audit report presented by the Court of Auditors in a public meeting on June 21, IPN reports.

The Competition Council is an autonomous public authority that enforces the legislation on competition, state aid and advertising. Its mission is to make sure that the markets work for the consumers’ benefit by encouraging and ensuring the free competition in all the areas of economic activity.

Last year the Council was financed with state budget allocations (19.1m lei) and the tax paid for the examination of notifications about economic concentrations (0.7m lei), while the effective costs came to 19.3m lei. The value of the property managed by the Council was 5.3m lei at the end of 2017.

The audit team showed the collected proofs were sufficient to determine that the management of the competition sector is strategic and planned for a long term. The activities defined in the plan for 2017 were carried out in strict correlation with the preset performance indicators, ensuring the achievement of about 98% of these indicators. The Competition Council showed responsibility and implemented over 91% of the previous recommendations of the Court of Auditors.

Some of the irregularities identified by the audit team were mainly generated by particular shortcomings in the accounting policies, but these didn’t significantly affect the authenticity and accuracy of the information included in the financial reports.

Competition Council president Viorica Carare said the level of competition culture in Moldova has increased during the last few years, including in the country’s districts where local subdivisions of the Council were created a year ago. The shortage of staff is a problem experienced by the Council. ”In the education institutions of Moldova, they do not train specialists in the field of competition. Therefore, we invite the new employees, including those from the local subdivisions, to the central office where we train them for two-four months,” she stated.

Answering questions about state aid, Viorica Carare said the state aid offered to economic operators last year represented 4% of the GDP, but this is to be reduced to 1% by 2020.