Government rejects initiative on immediate payment of indexed sums to depositors of Banca de Economii, aged 90 and above

Because of the lack of available resources in the state budget, the Government rejected a legislative initiative from a group of MPs. The initiative provided that the depositors of Banca de Economii (BEM) who are 90 and above have the right to receive the indexed sums immediately, and not in stages. According to the information provided by Banca de Economii, 17,400 beneficiaries from indexation who were above 90 were registered as of December 31, 2006. The indexed sum calculated for the second stage for these categories of beneficiaries constitute MDL 18.3 mln. From the total number of requests 13,100 (75%) have been submitted by successors, the index sum constituting about MDL 13.6 mil. lei. According to Government data, in the period from 2003 to 2006, the deponents of the BEM, born before 1940, who submitted requests for indexation till November 1, have been paid about MDL 194 mln. According to data from BEM, the indexed sum constitutes MDL 114.7 mln for depositors born before 1926 (80 year old and above); MDL 210.3 mln – for those born before 1931 (75 and above); MDL 307.6 mln – for depositors born before 1936 (70 and above). In most of the cases, requests for indexation have been submitted by successors. According to the legislation, the quantum of 1 rouble to 1 leu will be applied for the recuperation of the first thousand of roubles of the collective balance of all the accounts held by the individual. The balance that exceeds the sum of 1,000 lei will be indexed at the proportion of 1 lei to 2.5 roubles. The payment of the indexed sums will be operated in stages, within the limits stipulated in the Budget Law for the respective year, depending on the birth year of the depositor. The initial information referred to 1,988,000 accounts and a deposit balance of 4.1373 billion roubles. Later, after BEM operated a repeated estimation of the accounts taking into consideration the indexation in 1995 to 1997, their number reduced to 1,298,000, and the sum on the accounts – down to 2.731 billion roubles. 18% on the account holders do not have heirs and if they pass away before recovering the indexed sums, their accounts will be closed. At the same time, circa 300,000 depositors lost the citizenship of Moldova, and other 500,000 had sums smaller than 1000 roubles on their accounts as of 1992. After the Moldovan leu had been introduced into circulation on November 29, 1993, and following the price liberalisation, the population’s deposits devaluated more than 1000 times.