Over the last four years, the Government has shown openness for the private sector to become involved in decision making. But this tendency has been insufficiently anchored. The taken decisions often didn’t take into account the problems faced by companies, Dumitru Budianschi, program director at the Independent Analytical Center “Expert-Grup”, said in the program “Public space” on Radio Moldova station.
“There are paradoxical situations when simple or even banal problems cannot be solved during many years. For example, the ecological tax for a CD is not paid for the cost of the CD, but for the product imprinted on the CD. This is absurd,” stated Budianschi, quoted by IPN. According to the expert, such things have been discussed for many times, but, as long as the institutions that interact with the private sector allow only a formal participation of the private sector in dialogues on the addressed problems, there will be no improvements.
The president of the Small and Medium-Sized Business Association Eugen Roscovan, deputy chairman of the National Employers Confederation of Moldova, said the formal attitude to the public-private dialogue negatively affects the entrepreneurial activity. The number of SMEs increases annually, but the rise is insignificant. On the other hand, the sales of the SMEs decrease. Over 99% of the companies declared zero profit at the end of last year. This means that they are close to bankruptcy.
The representative of the European Business Association Mariana Rufa said that even if the Association brings together larger companies, created with foreign investments, the problems faced by these companies are similar to those encountered by the Moldovan enterprises. “The member companies are not satisfied with the legal system. They lose a lot of time and money for defending their interests in court. We consider that Moldova, in this case the government and other state institutions, must work further to extend the justice sector reform and to improve the procurement procedures and the insurance system, which create big problems, including to foreign investors,” she stated.
According to the participants in the program, these problems must be solved because besides internal commitments, Moldova also has external commitments, as a member of the World Trade Organization and related to the implementation of the Association Agreement and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU.
