State now can assess performance of companies’ executive teams

The Government or the ministry that administers a state-run company or a company in which the state has a major holding cannot easily terminate the contract signed with the given company’s manager, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Valeriu Lazar said, when asked by the press if managers of unsuccessful companies will be dismissed, Info-Prim Neo reports. “In a state of law, you cannot terminate the contract with a given person even if you are not satisfied with their performance. The slightly socialist labor legislation protects the interests of the employee, in the given case the manager, rather than of the employer, which is the state. There are social partners. Things are not simple. On the other hand, until recently we did not have a mechanism for assessing the manager’s performance. In some of the cases, it is evident that the person is unsuitable and does not have interesting plans for developing the company. Now we have such an instrument. It is the internal audit,” said Valeriu Lazar. In this connection, he informed that he ordered performing internal audits at several state-owned companies administered by the Ministry of Economy, including the Certification Center, RED Nord-Vest, the Balti Standardization Center, the Ciadar-Lunga Standardization Center, and the Balti-based company Acva–Aparat. “The auditors attended training courses at the Ministry of Finance and will be now sent to companies to thoroughly analyze situation there and see how the public money is spend, where the money is invested and how efficient the managers’ decisions are. We will then be able to make decisions,” the minister said.