Trade activity on entrepreneur licence basis might be extended in Moldova till 31 December 2019

Chisinau, 8 November /MOLDPRES/ - The government proposes to extend the deadline for the carrying of retail trade with native food products and easily perishable goods based on licence till 31 December 2019. The cabinet gave a positive note to a draft law to this end at a today meeting.   

The draft law was worked out by the Economics and Infrastructure Ministry, in order to stimulate and manage the transition of the retail trade activity from the entrepreneur licence to independent work or other legal forms of entrepreneurship.   

Starting from January 2017, decision-makers amended the legal framework through introduction of a new form of entrepreneurship – independent activity, as alternative to the entrepreneur licence. More than 1,500 entrepreneurs private people, carrying out retail trade, migrated from licence to independent activity starting the adoption of the laws till September 2018. At the same time, in last September, over 9,100 licences were still valid in this field.

According to the draft’s authors, in the last two years, a slow process of migration from licence to independent activity has been recorded. In the context, authorities’ and public institutions’ representatives discussed problems of the transition with representatives of the licence holders at topic-related meetings on the platform of the economic council under the prime minister.   

In December 2016, the deadline for the carrying out of retail trade based on licence was postponed for two years, as a compromise at requests by licence holders to be given a new period of transition towards other forms of organizing the economic activity. Thus, the carrying out of the retail trade by licence holders was to be banned starting from 1 January 2017.   

(Reporter V. Bercu, editor M. Jantovan)