Minister of Finance Octavian Armasu assures that the pensions and salaries will be paid and the pensions in April will be indexed. He developed the issue in the talk show “Reply” on Prime TV channel.

“Now we concentrate our efforts on paying salaries and pensions to budget-funded employees. We will purchase no pen for budget-funded institutions. We will make effort to index the pensions in April, in accordance with the law,” stated Armasu.

The minister noted that they count a lot on the first tranche of the loan promised by the Government of Romania and hope that the Government of Moldova will fulfill the conditions imposed by the Romanian authorities in the immediate future. “The loan will be used to cover the short-term costs, for pensions and salaries. Even if the IMF mission comes to Chisinau, it will not sign a financing contract with us immediately. It will be a diagnostic mission,” said Armasu.

As to the dismissal of the chiefs of the Customs Service and the State Main Tax Inspectorate, the minister said an internal inquiry will be launched in this regard to see if there were indeed excessive inspections and cases of bribery.

Octavian Armasu said the new heads haven’t been yet chosen. “There are several candidates, but it is too early to give names. Most probably, there will be held a contest,” he stated.