The PAS parliamentary group of the ACUM Bloc will register a legislative proposal aimed at promoting electronic payments and reducing the use of cash.

Presenting the bill in a news conference, MP Dan Perciun said they propose reducing the VAT on card payments by 2%. All the companies that have more than ten employees and have the headquarters in a city or a municipality will have to mandatorily transfer the salaries to card.

Also, the limit for cash payments made by companies will be reduced to 10,000 lei a month, down from 100,000 lei. According to Dan Perciun, the presented measures will be implemented together with the reduction in bank commissions.

Natalia Gavrilița, minister of finance in the Sandu Government, said that to ensure decent living conditions for the people, the economic growth potential should be increased. This can be done by promoting a card payment policy and by reducing cash payments. The experience of other states shows the reduction in cash payments can add up to 3% of economic growth.

In Moldova, card payments represent only 3.7% of the GDP. In other Eastern European countries, the figure stands at about 10%. The augmentation of electronic payments helps to reduce the underground economy and corruption and to increase the efficiency of institutions, which can contribute to economic acceleration, stated Natalia Gavrilița.

Economic expert Dumitru Vicol said the proposed measures will increase the volume of non-cash transactions to 9 billion lei, which would bring revenues of about 3.3 billion lei into the state budget.

After the bill is registered, the initiative will be proposed for public debates.

According to the National Bank of Moldova, the operations with cards issued in Moldova that were performed in the country in the first three quarters of last year came to over 45 billion lei. Cash withdrawals represented over 37 billion lei of this sum.