MEC to submit to Government for approval a concept on supporting internal commerce

Although in the last 5 years the share of the authorized commerce has increased, the amount of illegal transactions in Moldova is still high. This fact supports the black economy, the specialists of the Ministry of Commerce and Economy (MEC) say. Afterwards the Government approved the Development Strategies for the agro-alimentary and industrial areas, MEC wants to submit a concept on supporting internal commerce. According to the deputy-minister of MEC, Igor Dodon, the contribution of the internal commerce in forming the Gross Domestic Product is of 11.2%. The volume of net sells increased in the last 3 years by 25%, amounting at the end of 2005 to about MDL 40 mln. At the same time, all the lacunas of the legislation, insufficient financing and discrepancies in creating retail or whole-sale commerce do not allow obtaining a real progress. The enterprises declare a low profitability or even present a negative result of their activity. MEC proposes a systemic tackling of area’s problems, pleading in favor of amending the legislation and at the same time changing the fiscal policy and the way of registering commercial unities. The Ministry pleads in favor of elaborating a new law on internal commerce and replacing all normative acts which do not comply with the present realities. In order to avoid superposition of the controlling attributions given to different state bodies, the specialists of the Ministry propose to appoint responsible institutions for performing technical control of the commercial unities and the financial control will remain the duty of the fiscal bodies. According to the statistics of MEC, the institutional framework of the internal commerce is represented by 12 thousand legal persons, including 6.6 thousand in shops, 1.7 thousand booths and 840 drug stores. More than a half of the retail commerce and over 90% of whole-sale commerce is located in Chisinau.