Swiss government to back local development initiatives in Moldova

Chisinau, 11 January /MOLDPRES/ - Moldova’s settlements participating in a project, Migration and Local Development, (MiDL) in 2018 will launch 38 development initiatives, due to be carried out with the financial support of the government of Switzerland, local authorities, as well as of Moldovan natives who left the concerned settlements.  

The budget for the second phase of the MiDL project is of 1.4 million dollars, with the money due to be used till late 2018. A special component of this project deals with the local economic development. To this end, the Swiss government will provide nine economic grants worth 25,000 dollars each for nine MiDL partner settlements. Thanks to this, better conditions will be created for attracting investors, jobs will be created and a stable income will be ensured for local residents.  

In 2017, in the first phase of the project, implemented by the Moldovan cabinet within the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), infrastructure projects were carried out with natives’ contributions amounting to over 2.4 million lei. More than 160,000 residents from those 25 towns and villages, with which the MiDL project cooperated in the first stage, already benefit from these services. At the same time, the participating settlements have advanced in cooperation with migrants, by electing ambassadors of native settlement to different countries of the world, thus creating a network of the most active natives.   

Due to these projects, the communities hit by migration presently can benefit from improved local public services, with enhanced access to opportunities generating incomes, including support for the re-employment, backing for doing business.  

The Migration and Local Development project started in 25 partner settlements in 2015 and another 14 settlements were selected on contest basis for the second phase of the programme in 2017.

(Reporter L. Grubii, editor L. Alcaza)