More than 200 patent holders from Soroca town mounted a protest before the local mayor’s office, demanding that the local authorities should intervene and ask the legislature to abrogate the amendments that ban trade based on patent starting with 2017.

Grigore Marciuc, chairman of the Soroca Association of Small Entrepreneurs, has told IPN that there are 720 traders who work based on patent in Soroca. These pay by about 150 lei a month into the local budget and over 500 lei a year in social and other taxes like market and health insurance taxes. The patent holders create new jobs and need to work based on patent further.

The protesters asked the mayor of Soroca Victor Sau to make approaches to Parliament to obtain the abrogation of the legislation that bans patent-based trade from January 1, 2017. They also demanded to announce a ten-year moratorium on changes to the legislation on small enterprises. According to them, this period coincides with that provided in the EU-Moldova Association Agreement for adjusting the national legislation to the EU’s.

Grigore Marciuc added that they agreed with the mayor of Soroca that the resolution adopted in the protest will be transmitted to the central authorities. The protest was supported by the representatives from Causeni and Stefan Voda as well.

The Government recently approved amendments to the law on the entrepreneur’s patent, suggesting that the patent holders should register individual businesses by notifying the local mayor’s office of this and by submitting an application to local offices of the State Tax Service. According to the authors of the amendments, the patent was introduced in 1998 with the aim of supporting private individuals to start own businesses and develop them as individual enterprises, limited liability companies and others, noting that such a practice is no longer used in other countries.