Moldovan, Romanian premiers' statements after joint meeting in Constanta

Chisinau, 22 September /MOLDPRES/- Moldovan Prime Minister Valeriu Strelet and his Romanian counterpart, Victor Ponta, made statements after joint meeting of Moldovan and Romanian governments, held in Constanta today.

Valeriu Strelet: Your Excellence, dear journalists,

We had a productive meeting. It lasted two hours of discussions, 15 issues on the agenda were approached in a very constrictive and collegial manner.

We appreciate we managed to convene in the second intergovernmental meeting in a short term, from 27 August till today. I made a proposal meant to institutionalize this cooperation mechanism, in order that in the future, we should set clear intervals of future joint meetings of the Romanian and Moldovan governments. We should have a higher frequency of meetings to ascertain achievements, efficiency of previous meetings and to revise the achievements we have made.

We appreciate very much openness and sincere friendship of this meeting. We appreciate the political decision to offer to Moldova financial assistance for a five-year period by disbursing 60 million euros in 2015. We intend to reanimate investment projects, which have been temporarily suspended, because of lack of budgetary support from the development partners in the context of certain periods of political instability.

We mentioned that the Moldovan government, even if it has a short term of investiture, took concrete steps for implementing the Association Agreement, Association Agenda and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. We revised this field and expressed gratitude to Romania, which is the most dedicated supporter of Moldova in its European integration.

I would like to especially appreciate concrete interest from the Romanian government via intention letters that were presented for participation in building gas and electricity transportation infrastructure in Moldova, which will allow the country to get out of dependence on single source of energy resources supply and to get rid of status of hostage of an old system. We will do our best to speed up these projects.

Romania became the main trade partner of Moldova in 2014, the trade exchanges exceeded 1.2 billion dollars. This tendency is on the rise. Romania must become one of the main investors, not only trade partners. In this context, we started a process of adjusting the legislation in force that Romanian enterprises in construction and design sector should not pass arduous accreditation in Moldova.

I thanked Mr. Ponta for maintaining our country in 2016 in the list of assistance beneficiary states. The implementation of SMURD service in Moldova, restoration of the Mother and Child Care Institute, renovation of cultural sights, restoration of kindergartens and other important projects denote consistence and pragmatism of cooperation between our states. The today’s meeting ended with signing important agreements meant to complete and consolidate bilateral juridical framework.

During the next meeting, we are set to report the results and go on principle: Moldova is closer to Romania, it is closer to Europe. I believe in Moldova’s European future.

 Victor Ponta:

I want to say welcome to Mr. Strelet, entire governmental team from Chisinau. It is a special moment, and I wish this meeting of the two governments to take place more often in an institutional framework.

Firstly, there has been earlier an informal discussion, today it is official and is related to the Romanian government’s decision to propose an agreement on refundable financial assistance amounting to 150 million euros for a-five year period between the Romanian and Moldovan governments. It is a difficult period that Moldova is currently going through from the financial viewpoint, till the moment it will have an agreement with international financial institutions – IMF, World Bank and European Commission, as we had the past years. We are the first ones to support you in this difficult period by offering you this refundable assistance in extremely advantageous conditions. I can assure you that I talked to Romanian president, leaders of political parties, and there is a joint intention as regards Romanian institutions to approve this agreement.

Secondly, today we initialed a new protocol to the agreement between Romania and Moldova on non-refundable financing of projects, so that we will be able to finance important projects on interconnection of energy transportation systems, as there is the same strategic priority for Romania and Moldova to have interconnection of electricity and gas systems.

I want to announce that in the current budget approved by the Romanian parliament, other 5 million euros is for kindergartens from Moldova.

Also, during the talks on Romanian energy companies’ involvement in development of energy system of Moldova, Economics Minister Mr.Tudose presented intention letters on behalf of the Romanian companies - Transelectrica, Transgaz – on privatization and development in Moldova. The Romanian companies can carry out the programme of investments in Moldova.

(Editor M. Jantovan)