Moldovan parliament establishes moratorium on privatizations

Chisinau, 19 July /MOLDPRES/ - The parliament today established a moratorium on the procedures underway as to privatization, granting to concession, signing of public-private partnerships on public assets.  

The decision was approved by majority vote. The moratorium will be valid till the parliament presents and approves the findings of the inquiry commission for the analysis of the way privatizations have been organized and carried out since 2013.

According to the authors of the draft law, MPs Vlad Batrincea and Vladimir Turcan, some processes of privatization and public-private partnerships were initiated by the former governance urgently, in a suspect way, at the end of the mandate. “To block those suspect processes, an exceptional suspension of all the concerned processes is justified till the inquiry commission ends its work, so that they do not achieve the completion of procedures, which will create legal obstacles to the return of public assets to the property of Moldova,” the draft’s authors said.    

The parliament’s decision will enter into force on the date of its publication.

The parliament has earlier set up an inquiry commission, due to analyze the way the privatizations of public properties had been organized and carried out since 2013 till present. At the same time, Prime Minister Maia Sandu asked the Public Properties Agency to identify legal ways through which it is to temporarily suspend the privatization processes underway.