The head of the Parliament’s commission on economy, budget and finance Dumitru Alaiba proposes merging the Competition Council and the National Agency for Energy Regulation (NAER) so as to create a solid, independent, efficient authority that would act in the interests of the citizens and would bear sole responsibility for the market, IPN reports.
In a press briefing, the PAS MP said NAER and the Competition Council are very important for ensuring the functionality of the economy, for ensuring prices and reasonable tariffs for all the citizens and entrepreneurs, order on the market and equal conditions. In practice yet, the projected results cannot be seen.
According to him, the Competition Council this year alone will spend 26 million lei of the taxpayers’ money without producing anything palpable. During over ten years, this institution hasn’t delivered any results. Its task is to fight monopoly, to protect competition, to destroy cartel agreements so as to safeguard the interests of market players and the citizens pay fair prices. But the Council does not take action and the consumers pay exaggerated prices.
For its part, NAER must ensure order on the energy market, equal, clear and transparent conditions so that the citizens do not feel robbed. It should decide promptly, predictably and fairly for the economy to be safe. But this cannot be praised either. The citizens pay exaggerated taxes and do not trust a regulator that should be independent because they often saw this regulator being politically biased and invoking its independence when it was to promote the public interest.
The MP noted that many European countries provide institution merger mechanisms. In Estonia, such an institutional model has existed since 2008 and this can be applied in Moldova as Estonia is a small country, as Moldova is.
In the immediate period, intense work will be done to finish the relevant bill. Public consultations will be held and reports on the work of the institutions will be examined. The goal is to do the reform by this yearend.
