The Public Property Agency made an official request to the investor of the Chisinau International Airport over the termination of the contract. The state’s position remained the same – the airport should be returned to the exclusive ownership of the state. There are legal conditions for terminating the contract because the investor didn’t fulfill the contractual obligations, said President Igor Dodon, being quoted by IPN.
“The same is true about AirMoldova. The situation there is even more serious. It is an enterprise that has rather large debts. We regret that AirMoldova is in the situation in which it is. So far it has operated all the planned flights. I hope a lot it will survive. But the airport should be returned to the state. AirMoldova probably too, at a certain stage. We must first clarify the situation with the debts,” Igor Dodon stated in the program “President Responds”.
The operations and management of the Chisinau International Airport were transferred to Avia Invest in November 2013 under a public-private partnership contract valid for 49 years. The concessionaire pledged to invest €250 million in the modernization of the airport.
AirMoldova was sold in October 2018 to the Civil Aviation Group SRL company, which manages the Romanian airline Blue Air. At that time, the Public Property Agency announced that 50 million lei were transferred to the state budget, while the rest of the company value represents Air Moldova debts, which the investor was obliged to pay. An audit by the Court of Auditors revealed that the privatization of AirMoldova at some of the stages was performed with deviations from the regulations. The shortcomings influenced the method of assessing the facility whose price was lower than the real market price.
