City Hall intends to facilitate producers’ access to Chisinau markets

The Chisinau administration must create clear and non-discriminatory conditions to facilitate national producers’ access to the markets of the municipality of Chisinau, Mayor of Chisinau Dorin Chirtoaca said at Monday’s meeting of the City Hall. Chirtoaca instructed the municipal services to identify solutions for solving the problems related to the activity of the markets. Vladimir Nirca, head of the General Trade and Service Provision Division, said that the local public authorities cannot intervene in the administration process because of the 42 markets that work on the territory of the municipality, only the Central Market is a municipal enterprise, while the others are private. The market administrators are the ones that fix the taxes for selling inside the market and very often these taxes do not allow the producer to sell the merchandise directly in the market, Vladimir Nirca said. To overcome such a situation, Nirca proposed opening by a municipal farmers’ market in every district of the city. The head of Rascani district Mihai Carlig backed the idea. He said that only one agrifood market exists in Rascani and the producer does not have adequate access. On the other hand, the chief architect of Chisinau Vlad Modarca said that the existent markets are an inherited shame and their number should be halved. According to Modarca, with the appearance of new shopping centres, the existent markets will disappear. For his part, deputy mayor Mihai Furtuna said that a large part of the national agricultural producers refuse to pay the tax for selling in the market and prefer to sell the merchandise inside quarters. He also said that most of the producers want to sell their goods in the Central Market and they do not go to the district markets that have outfitted places. The Mayor General asked deputy mayor Mihai Furtuna to call a meeting with the administrators of all the Chisinau markets to jointly identify acceptable solutions. The 42 markets existing in Chisinau at present provide 17,800 trading places. Of these, about 14,500 are being used.