November 19, 2024 – The Economic Council under the Prime Minister of the Republic of Moldova is discussing a draft of regulatory changes, generated following the development of maps of regulatory obligations and procedures, based on the Prime Minister’s directive. The initiative aims to facilitate the development of entrepreneurship, simplify the interaction between economic agents and authorities, and eliminate regulatory constraints that hinder business activity.

The changes were developed with the support of the Secretariat of the Economic Council, with the assistance of the USAID Project for Institutional and Structural Reforms, in coordination with the Ministry of Economic Development and Digitalization. The changes aim to eliminate regulatory constraints and implement solutions to reduce bureaucracy, including:

Eliminating the prohibition of registering an enterprise if a person has previously registered enterprises that are not operating and have not been liquidated in accordance with the law or have debts to the national public budget; Eliminating the obligation to publish notices regarding changes in the name and location in the Official Gazette.

The notice shall be published in the electronic bulletin of the registration authority; Reducing registration fees for changes in the constituent information of an economic agent related to the change of administrator, location; Eliminating the legal constraint for registering branches of a foreign legal entity recently created, as they do not yet have closed and reported financial periods, including because they have just started their activity;

Eliminating the limitation on the payment of interim dividends to quarterly or semi-annual payments; Eliminating the taxpayer’s obligation to submit to the responsible subdivision of the State Tax Service an application for the transfer of the file to another subdivision in case of a change of location; Granting the economic agent the right to place advertising devices on the facade of premises that are owned or used in business activities, without obtaining the consent of all apartment owners in the block, if the advertising does not exceed the limits of the mentioned facade and does not obstruct visibility;

Obliging banks to use information from the sources of state registers to verify the identity documents of individuals, without requesting copies of them from clients and accepting documents in the form of electronic documents in the interaction with clients.

Within the framework of public consultations within working group 1 of the Economic Council, “Eliminating Constraints in Entrepreneurial Activity,” led by Mila Malairău, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Moldova, representatives of the business community and state authorities were able to make proposals to improve the document. These will be taken into account when finalizing the changes.

The draft will be further analyzed by the Government and receive the opinion of the competent authorities. According to experts, these changes, if approved by Parliament, will bring 150 million lei in savings for economic agents annually.

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.