Moldovan authorities approve new measures to back activity of Transnistrian economic agents

Chisinau, 31 March /MOLDPRES/-Moldovan authorities started to review the current legislation, in order to back the business community on the left bank of Dniester and create advantageous conditions for the external commercial activity of Transnistrian economic agents, the Bureau for Reintegration has reported.

Measures aim to speed up the social-economic development of settlements in the breakaway Transnistrian region, promote interaction between entrepreneurial environments on both banks of Dniester and re-establish a single economic space.

In this context, the government issued the decision No. 287 on 12 March 2016, thus approving the draft law amending and supplementing some legislative documents, providing for the objectives of fiscal, customs and budgetary policies for 2016. The draft law was submitted to the parliament for examination and adoption.

The above-mentioned draft law also amends the annex to the law No. 127 of 25 July 2014 on the Combined Nomenclature of Goods.

Once the new amendments enter into force, customs duty rates for some materials used as complementary products for manufacturing companies’ end products, will decrease from “5”, “6.5”, “8” and “10” per cent to “1” per cent (18 tariff headings in total). This will facilitate Transnistria’s trade with the EU, will improve the investment climate and will also create the necessary conditions for a better development of the production activity.

Following the talks with economic agents from the Transnistrian region, as well as consultations held with EU partners, the sides ascertained that entrepreneurs from both banks of Dniester cope with the same problem, having to pay unofficial taxes for the import of raw materials non-originating from the countries Moldova is having a free trade agreement with. This raw material is used to process the end product, which is subsequently exported to the EU.

It is worth noting that almost 1,800 Transnistrian economic agents have been registered at the Moldovan State Chamber of Registration so far, benefiting from the facilities provided in the current national legislation, as well as from bilateral and multilateral tools of the commercial-economic sector, which Moldova is part of.

(Editor M. Jantovan)