Government creates economic regions in Moldova

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce plans to create economic regions in Moldova and says that this process will not disturb the present raional administrative-territorial division. This information was made public by the Minister of Economy and Commerce on Monday, September 11 within the frameworks of the project of the Investments Attracting and Exports Promoting Strategy for 2006-2015. Lazar mentioned that at the moment, a great lack of balance can be seen from the economic territorial point of view, because Moldova has an over focusing of the economic possibilities in Chisinau and partially in Balti. “In the rest of the country, the situation is absolutely tragic”, the minister recognized. “We do not want to make another territorial-administrative reform, but we try to structure these economic development regions taking into consideration their present potential, which could turn to good account region’s natural resources and historical abilities”, the minister declared. He also mentioned that the Government tries to use the best practices in this respect, for example China’s and Italy’s, which planned to develop regions as priority. Valeriu Lazar said that there are all the necessary premises in order to ensure a sustainable economic development of the country’s entire territory. According to him, economic regions will be created through laws. At present a bill on this issue is examined and further at national and local level development strategies for these regions will be elaborated. Once the legislative framework is created, the minister said that the European Union promised to “massively finance” the regional development. “We are following the experiences of all the countries from the region, which show that 70-80% of resources necessary for the regional development came from outside the country, but it happened only when everything was clear and strategies on the existent possibilities of a certain region were elaborated.