The Secretariat of the Economic Council to the Prime Minister is supported by the Euro-pean Bank for Reconstruction and Development, funded by the UK Government’s Good Governance Fund, and the World Bank Group project “Investment Climate Reform“, funded by the Swedish Government.

Quarterly Info Bulletin

October 2017

New amendments to the Labor Code were approved

Amendments to the Labor Code, developed within the framework of the Economic Coun-cil, have been voted in Parliament on July 22, 2017. They refer to 36 articles of the Code and provide, among other things, that the employer will not have to motivate the deci-sion regarding the unsatisfactory outcome of the probation period; the employee‘s old-age pension status could be ground for dismissal by the employer; reduction of unpaid additi-onal childcare leave until the age of 4 and not up to 6 years as was the case until present.

The draft law was written by two working groups set up under the auspices of the Eco-nomic Council with the participation of re-presentatives of public authorities, business associations, trade unions and employers‘ or-ganizations, as well as civil society. The pur-pose of these amendments is to improve the business environment, and investment clima-te in the country. The new changes are to be promulgated by the head of state.

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Parliament approved amendments to the Law on Labor Migration

By amending Law no. 180-XVI of July 10, 2008, the state aims to facilitate attraction of for-eign investments to the economy of Moldova. Once the law is enforced, it will facilitate the right to work and stay in Moldova for migrant workers. Among other things, the draft law passed on July 20, 2017 simplifies the proce-dure of obtaining a work and residence permit for highly skilled foreign workers, posted wor-kers, individuals in management positions, employees of companies that are on the list of investors of national importance and wor-kers who are on the list of priority jobs on the labor market in Moldova. The document sti-

pulates that the term for granting the right to work and residence is reduced by more than half and, overall, the number of procedures is reduced by over 30 percent. The issue was addressed within the Economic Council by bu-siness associations who stated that the pro-cedure for issuing work permits for foreign citizens was cumbersome and the term for obtaining the documents could last for half a year. This discouraged investors who were co-ming to Moldova with investments, and could not bring the team of specialists to put the bu-siness into operation.

Enhancing the accountability and

efficiency of ministries Economic Council Secretariat developed incentives for better regulation for ministries and promoted their approval.

The regulations on establishing all new nine ministries included the definition of mission proposed by the Secretariat, which is putting the emphasis on analysis of problems by mi-nistries, based on which efficient public po-licies must be developed and interventions proposed, which should be justified, efficient and ensuring the best combination between the objectives reached and costs generated. Additionally, the Secretariat succeeded to pro-mote inclusion into the regulation on Minis-try of Economy and Infrastructure of a general function on monitoring and developing impro-vements to Moldova’s score and ranking in in-ternational indicators within the policy areas of the ministry, which include: economy, infor-

mation and communication technology, cons-truction, transportation, quality infrastructure and market surveillance, energy security and efficiency. The international indicators are based on me-thodology and principles of healthy and effi-cient market economy, being assessed objec-tively by experts and based on perception of businesses and citizens. Thus, guiding minis-try activities and measuring its performance based on the indicators will result in creating more favourable environment for business ac-tivity and well-being of citizens.

The regulations on ministries with proposals from EC Secreta-riat were approved by the Go-vernment on September 30, 2017.

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Less constraints and risks for the businesses

The state wants to decriminalize economic activity by liberalizing some provisions of the Criminal Code in relation to businesses. There were discussions in the Economic Council on this topic, on September 22, 2017. According to businesses, economic violations should not have criminal consequences. The nature of penalties should be pecuniary. Entrepreneurs complain about those provisions that current-ly allow stopping business activity and provide

for the preventive arrest of the businessman on grounds of economic violations. During the debates, representatives of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) said they are now in the process of analyzing legal provisions on sanctions in the area of entrepreneurial acti-vity. Attending the event, Minister of Justice, Vladimir Cebotari said the ministry is working on draft amendments to the legislation in the area.

The Minister has been open about ideas from the Economic Council and the IFC experts.

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No employment records from 2019

CanceledA document to this effect was approved by the Parliament on July 7, 2017. Thus, as of January 1, 2019, the personnel data will no longer be en-tered in the employment records. The amend-ments are contained in Law no. 123, which also includes the simplification of the procedure for reporting salary payments, mandatory social and state medical insurance. The amendments exclude the duplication of information presen-ted by the businesses to public institutions, creating a unique online reporting platform, to which the State Tax Service, the National Social Insurance House, the National Medical Insuran-ce Company will be connected. According to authorities, employment records are outdated and create inconveniences for businesses. The procedure for filling in and maintaining emplo-yments records is costly and poses the risk of sanctioning businesses in case of wrong entries. The business should buy them, fill them in the prescribed manner and keep two registers. The-re are cases when employment records are fal-sified. The solution comes from the Economic Council, which contributed to the elaboration of changes and has been promoting this reform for almost a year in the Parliament.

Waste incineration to be regulated by the law

There were public discussions on the amend-ments proposed by the Ministry of Agricul-ture, Regional Development and Environment to Law 209 of 29.07.2016 under the platform of the Economic Council to the Prime Minister, on September 20, 2017. More specifically, it is about the amendment of Article 17, which today says that incineration and co-incinera-tion of waste of any origin is prohibited, with the exception of waste resulting from medical

activity. Based on the amendment of art. 17, this will be governed by normative documents that will require development. Nowadays, al-though prohibited, some businesses incinera-te waste. The businesses and environmenta-lists present at the debate support the idea of amending art. 17 of Law 209. Especially sin-ce the proposal for amending this article was made in the past as well, but the legislator re-fused to amend it.

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Business community requires amendments to the Copyright Act

Currently, Art. 26 of Law 293-XIII of 23.11.94 provides that the economic ope-rator who produces or imports audio equipment, video recorders, disc drives, sound and / or video media, cassettes, laser discs, compact discs, etc., which can be used to perform replicas, must pay a 3% fee (compensatory remuneration).

The business community says it is bothered by the tax on mobile phones, smartphones, tablets and laptops - devices not found in Law 139. After lengthy talks, all actors involved in this process have reached a consensus. The amendment to the law will be made, but the State Intellectual Property Agency will con-sider the proposals of the business commu-nity and private organizations for collective copyright management. All proposals will be collected by the Secretariat of the Economic Council.

The Regulation on the organization and conduct of dual education was developed

The document incorporates the experience gained during 3 years of dual learning in the Republic of Moldova, as well as the internati-onal experience in this field. The provisions of the Regulation were discussed on September 8, 2017. In its current version, it stipulates that based on a joint agreement with the econo-mic operators, vocational education institu-tions, schools, colleges, centers of excellence can initiate dual vocational education. At the same time, this system is not mandatory for either school or company. Experts from the

Ministry of education, culture and research say that dual education should be seen as an opportunity in the process of training the la-bor force. The document was debated within the Platform of the Economic Council by re-presentatives of decision-makers, business and national and international experts. Seve-ral proposals to improve the document were launched during the debates, which will be taken into account when finalizing the Regu-lation until its submission to the Government for approval.

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Canceled

Advancing Moldova’s position in

Getting Credit

The Government proposed amendments to the Law on Credit History Bureaus, which were supposed to facilitate the activity of credit bu-reaus and expand the sources of information for credit histories. In the Parliament, sever-al amendments were proposed by MPs to the draft law and, among other issues, the intenti-on was to exclude provisions related to broa-dening the sources of credit history. EC Secre-tariat was monitoring the promotion of the draft amendments, and intervened promptly in cooperation with the Association of Busi-

ness People from Moldova, which is leading the working group no. 5 on advancing the po-siton of Moldova in international rankings. The Parliamentary Commission was convin-ced to keep the provisions, which is supposed to contribute to the improvement of Moldo-va’s ranking in Doing Business Getting Credit Indicator next year.

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