New law to ban state agencies providing state assistance to discriminate companies

The National Competition Protection Agency (NCPA) has drafted a bill on the state assistance, Info-Prim Neo reports. NCPA deputy director Ion Echim says the draft is being okayed by government agencies. According to him, practically any public authority, either central or local, is more or less involved in granting state assistance. However there are no clear, transparent rules determining the respective process. On the other hand, Moldova committed in the Moldova-EU Action Plan to draft and apply such a law. “The area of state aid is to be strictly regulated, as some public authorities, by granting state assistance to companies, either as fiscal or customs advantages and facilities, tax exemptions, either as preferential loans or material assets, or money, can place such economic entities in a privileged position compared to others, restricting competition on the market or generating unfair competition,” he has explained. The draft worked out by the NCPA defines the state aid, establishing the general norms, valid for all the authorities which deal with state assistance, regardless of their tasks or the form of the state help. The draft provides for the cases in which the state assistance may be granted, the responsibilities of the offering side and of the receiver, the ways of checking up the usage of the state assistance and the responsibilities in case of misusage, as well as the procedure of returning the assistance.