Finance minister assures salaries, pensions to be paid in full on time in Moldova
12:03 | 12.07.2019 Category: Economic
Chisinau, 12 July /MOLDPRES/ – Minister of Finance (MF), Natalia Gavrilita, has assured that salaries and pensions will be paid in full and on time. The statement has been made on Friday, 12 July, at a press conference.
According to MF, the new Public Sector Paying Act was adopted in a hurry, without being sufficiently prepared, without a register or data of public employees that would allow impact assessment. Also, the law was passed after local authorities had planned their budgets. "Consequently, if we look at the execution of the budget for the first half of the year, we see that spending on the salary law will exceed by over MDL 01 bln – amount planned in budget. Moreover, the freezing of relations with foreign partners questioned the sources with which this deficit could be financed," said Gavrilita.
Under these circumstances, the priority of new Government was to unblock relations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and EU. Thus, the Ministry of Finance is currently working on rectifying state budget (BS). Following the rectification, over MDL 01 bln will be transferred from BS to the local budgets to cover the salary costs. Also, it will be reduced the planned expenditure for capital investment.
"We will make some adjustments and transfer resources from BS to local budgets (BL). We plan to transfer over MDL 01 bln. The budgets of several local authorities allow coverage of wage costs until November 2019. In some authorities this situation is even worse. In budget rectification, we shall be able to include incomes and EU assistance of MDL 1,368 bln," said Gavrilita.
According to minister, the officials will go to Parliament with budget rectifications and changes to the Customs and Tax Code by mid – August so that IMF funding is approved in September and EU funds can be accessed by the end of 2019.
The MF has added that the authorities have set up an IMF mission to mobilise additional revenues to state budget (BS), including raising excise duties on tobacco products starting 01 January 2020.
