What features make us interesting to the world? Moldova does not yet have an answer to this question. Without an answer, the country cannot ensure its development. Moldova needs an own development model. Such a conclusion was reached by participants in IPN’s public debate “Why does modernization of the economy stall?”.
“If we look at the figures for the past ten years, we can see that Moldova’s GDP grew more than the global average. Our growth is of 50%, while the global average is of 3.7%. But if we analyze things to see what fueled the growth, we will see that we build a slow and unstable consumption economy that has nothing to do with economic development,” said the president of the Association of IT Companies Veceslav Kunev.
According to the businessman, those who signed the Moldova – EU Association Agreement decided: we signed and shifted the responsibility for development onto someone else and wise guys should now come and tell us what we must do for things in our country to go well. “But the signing of the Association Agreement does not guarantee that everything will be fine. We need subjectivity, own understanding of the development, a development idea, a country idea,” he stated.
Explaining his opinion, Veceslav Kunev gave an example. “Each of the world leaders have technological development strategies for many years to come. And this is a matter of principle. This is how they see the international division of labor and how they intend to earn. In Moldova, we do not have state functionaries who would know the technological strategies of China, the U.S. Germany... We simply do not understand that we must know them. We cannot see were we belong. We are waiting for them to come and tell us where our place is.”
Doctor of Economy Galina Șelari, director of the Center for Strategic Studies and Reforms, said the whole experience of cooperation with the European partners was forgotten with the signing of the Association Agreement and this affected the quality of the implementation of this key document. “We decided that this is something new and unusual and thus abandoned the previous stages of cooperation with the EU, but they would have helped us not to politicize our relations with the Eastern partners,” she stated.
The expert reminded that Moldova, as all the post-Soviet countries, including Russia, had partnership and development agreements with the EU. “Then there was the Moldova – EU Action Plan. At that time, the EU and Russia signed an agreement on five areas of cooperation that were close by ideology, but much larger in format. Also, the CIS countries signed a Free Trade Agreement. So, the processes went in parallel and didn’t run country to each other,” said Galina Șelari.
Namely then, the national development strategy was worked out in Moldova. “This was the first and only strategic development document that was publicly assessed, including by the development partners that not only stated their viewpoint, but also took part in discussions with businesses and civil society. Now this cooperation story was forgotten, while the excessive politicization of the Association Agreement played a trick on us.”
Jurist Ștefan Gligor, the standing expert of IPN’s project “Overcoming European integration stereotypes through communication”, named one more reason for the absence of Moldova’s own development model. “I don’t remember someone contending for power in our country after having a view and plan of economic reforms as it is much easier to get political benefits using the old patterns. As a result, each election campaign and any electoral program are based on evident populism, vague promises and unclear goal achievement methods,” he stated.
The expert is convinced that the voters also place emphases incorrectly. “The voters hear one candidate promising an average salary of €500 and another one a salary of €600 and thus make a choice. But no one asks the politicians how they will fill the budget and how they will ensure such salaries,” stated Ștefan Gligor.
According to him, namely because of these factors geopolitics that divides society dominates in Moldova and prevents the appearance of an economic development model. “We don’t know what economy to build. There is no economic development and integration model. We do not see our place in a regional and world context,” concluded the expert.
The public debate “Why does modernization of the economy stall?” forms part of the series “Overcoming European integration stereotypes through communication” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
