About 150 permissive acts to be removed from entire legislative process in Moldova

Chisinau, 12 June /MOLDPRES/ - The government, at a today’s meeting, approved a draft law on amendment and completion of legislation which provides for the removal of about 150 permissive acts, including 18 licences, from the entire legislative process. The removal of 90 permissive acts will have a direct impact on the business environment; thus, the time spent and the financial expenses borne by entrepreneurs to get these permits will be reduced.   

“Following the removal, it is estimated that the private sector will annually get savings worth 43.6 million lei and the public sector - 18.4 million lei,” the Economics Ministry said. These costs represent savings of time for the processing, compilation, submission and management of documents and less expenditures for the issuance of permissive acts. The real indirect costs might be higher, specialists said. Permissive acts will be excluded from all sectors, including exports and imports, road transport, fiscal, customs, tourism fields, financial and energy markets, etc.    

The amendments were made to diminish the present burden on the business environment, as well as to optimize the expenses and effort in the regulation process through permissive acts, including licences. The revision of the legal framework is made in order to implement the single desk mechanism nationally, as this is a logical precondition for including the permissive acts and licences in the platform of the electronic single desk.   

The process of optimization and revision was initiated, taking into account that 95 per cent of the current permissive acts are not connected with at least one principle of regulation of the entrepreneurial activity. For certain permissive acts, the requirements and procedures are not contained in the regulatory framework and the Official Journal (Monitorul Oficial). The way of regulating the expenses for getting permissive acts is not transparent. Many times, in reality, an exaggerated and unjustified number of documents are demanded for getting permissive acts, once their list is not clearly established.    

The Economics Ministry also ascertains that abuses are recorded on behalf of issuing authorities at the issuance of permissive acts.  

The process of optimization and revision was carried out by the Economics Ministry, with the support of World Bank experts, along with public authorities in charge of issuing permissive acts examined, and with partial involvement of business environment’s representatives.   

The new classified list of permissive acts will contain three divisions: authorizations, certificates and licences. The changes to the legislation show the way and form of their regulation, relatedness of each category separately. The issuing authorities will no longer have right to turn down the application; yet, on the other hand, they will be able to suspend, up to 30 days, the term of issuance of the permissive act, if the applicant failed to annex to his/her application all documents established by law and did not fill in the application properly. Abuses will be punished tougher.     

A more complete regulation of the procedures and conditions of providing permissive acts is envisaged, which are preserved in the classified list of permissive acts. Some authorizations and certificates will be replaced by a system of simplified notification.   

The number of permissive acts in 2017 is to be cut to 150 (authorizations, certificates and licences), against the figure estimated for 2015 – more than 414 permissive acts in that period. In 2016, over 110 permissive acts were already excluded from the classified list.  

(Reporter V. Bercu, editor A. Raileanu)