A new iCouncil meeting was held

Progress in promoting reforms to digitise the economy was reviewed at a meeting of the Advisory Council for the Digitisation of the Economy – iConsil, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development and Digitisation Dumitru Alaiba.

Thus, it was mentioned that the Parliament recently adopted the Legislative Package for the development of remote business, developed with the participation of the Economic Council and with the financial support of USAID. The document reduces a number of constraints to distance business development. 

This law establishes the online identification of potential investors and employees willing to work in our country at a distance, simplifies regulations and interaction with the authorities, exempts these investors from residence and work permits, and updates the rules of labour security and the social and medical contributions regime for those working at a distance, etc. Another block of changes contained in the Contactless Package concerns electronic notarisation and remote person identification – indispensable elements for the founding and remote management of a company. Work is also already underway to develop eKYC and eNotary technology platforms to facilitate the implementation of this law. 

“We have the ambition to come up with drastic interventions to improve the business environment, which will position Moldova among the top countries in the region in terms of ease of doing business, encourage economic activism and contribute significantly to GDP growth,” Dumitru Alaiba told the meeting. 

Michael Jones, representative of the USAID Mission to Moldova, was present at the event and stressed the importance of accelerating the promotion of reforms in our country in the field of digitization of the economy. He also welcomed the development of the eCommerce legislative package, which was recently enacted, as well as the Contactless business package, which will foster the development of new business models in Moldova.

In this context, the experts who participated in the drafting of this document noted that everything related to the regulation of online trade in line with European practice and which has been equated with offline trade has been intervened. “We needed to update the concepts, procedures for notifying commercial establishments, consumer protection in e-commerce, non-discrimination of non-cash payments, etc.,” the experts said. In other news, the entire legislative framework for opening and running a business remotely was revised and the option of remote interaction with authorities, customers and other companies was opened up. 

Also during the iCouncil meeting, the study “Mapping public services in the lifecycle of a company, their availability online” by MISRA/USAID expert Sabina Cerbu and the updated FTA/USAID study on eCommerce by international expert Alexandar Zaric were presented.

The Secretariat of the Economic Council to the Prime Minister is supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, funded by the UK Government’s Good Governance Fund, and the International Finance Corporation’s Investment Climate Reform Project funded by the Government of Sweden’s International Development Agency.

The Secretariat of the Economic Council to the Prime Minister is supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, funded by the UK Government’s Good Governance Fund.