“Poverty emerged lately, but it is actually uncommon for Moldova” – Vasile Tarlev

“Poverty emerged in the last years, but it is actually uncommon for Moldova”, the PM Vasile Tarlev told reporters after the Government session on December 13, mentioning the necessity of eradicating poverty “as soon as possible”. According to the Premiere, the Government is very concerned about the country’s poverty level, and intends to implement as efficient as possible the Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, create new workplaces, improve the situation in the healthcare, education, develop the infrastructure and ensure the energy security of the state. During the meeting of the Consulting Group of donors for Moldova, of Tuesday, December 12, the Executive recognized that, despite the economic growth, poverty reduction has been stopped over the last years. The Government and its international partners admitted that the improvement of the economic growth pace and quality in Moldova would have a crucial role in reducing poverty. According to the National Human Development Report 2006, in the period between 2000 and 2003, economic growth, appeared to be strongly correlated with the poverty reduction, which evolved from 67.8% to 29%. However, the link between economic growth and poverty evolution weakened in 2004, the rate of the poor reducing by only 2.5 percentage points, while in the rural area the poverty rate increased. This interaction practically disappeared in 2005: although a production growth has been attained, poverty extended. A quarter of the citizens participating in the NHDR survey stated that in the last five years they became poorer or much poorer. According to the authors’ opinion poverty reduction was largely a result of incomes remitted from abroad, which, simultaneously, also positively influenced economic growth. Authors of the report also find that in Moldova income vulnerability is still a problem as great as poverty itself. Being asked how stable their incomes were, almost 33% of respondents considered that they have unstable incomes, and over 16% have very unstable incomes. Experts attest that as long as the income from agriculture will be very volatile, the income gap and poverty in Moldova will not be reduced in a sustainable way.