Moldovan Economic Council of Prime Minister discuss turning into account Free Trade Agreement with EU

Chisinau, 8 July /MOLDPRES/ - The agenda of the second 2015 session of the Economic Council of the Prime Minister was focused on barriers to turning into account the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) in favour of the business environment of Moldova, according to a press release by the Economic Council of the Prime Minister.

At the same time, the participants identified solutions needed by enterprises of Moldova to benefit from the facilities and opportunities provided by the free trade with EU. The participants in the meeting put emphasis on the approval of European procedures, standards and certificates, and referred to the connecting to the European register of seeds and fertilizers.

The Economic Council, along with Interim Prime Minister Natalia Gherman, ruled to take all needed actions, on a a priority basis, so that the EU market potential be turned into account at the maximum capacity by the Moldovan business environment, with increased emphasis on small and medium enterprises.

Thus, the Economic Council of the Prime Minister proposed submission to government for approval of the following measures: unilateral recognition of EU certificates and standards, simplifying the approval and certification process (reducing the time and cost by at least 50 per cent), making the necessary changes for implementing the simplified customs clearance procedures, reducing procedures, number of documents and time required to get legal licenses for export, ensuring the transposition of the European register of seeds and fertilizers into national legislation.

The business environment will benefit from a string of ample actions of information on exports to the EU. These include: programmes on training enterprises from areas with the involvement of local public administration, development and publication of topic-related guides on export to the EU market, information by competent public authorities about export requirements, the changes underway and the anticipated ones.

The initiatives of the Economic Council were launched after consulting the business environment on exports to EU markets. Thus, among the identified obstacles, the technical ones prevail, such as the complexity and duration of the procedure of certification and homologation of products (it takes about 6-24 months), the complicated process of getting permits, non-recognition of international certificates in Moldova (for example the certification of organic production). Another category of barriers deals with the business environment’s low level of information on the conditions, opportunities, specific features of exports to the EU market.

Last but not least, the participants in the meeting also reviewed the recent actions taken to simplify cross-border trade, such as reducing the number of documents needed for customs clearance (from 11 to 3 documents for the import and from 9 to 3 documents for export), simplifying the procedure for getting the export phyto-sanitary certificate by removing 4 out of the 7 documents demanded. They also discussed more current actions to be completed in the coming months, on the full transparency of the relevant border trade regulations, removing the need for additional registration of economic entities as exporter/importer , etc.

(Editor M. Jantovan)