The bill that provides for the transformation of the emergency loan guaranteed by the Government into state debt will seriously affect the citizens of the Republic of Moldova because these will have to pay large sums of money in the form of increased taxes and duties so that the Government could repay the state bonds to the value of over 13 billion lei to the National Bank of Moldova. The conclusions were formulated by the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption (CAPC), which appraised the document.
The Center’s head Galina Bostan, in a news conference at IPN, said the solution presented by the author of the draft law, which is the Government, is unjustified. “Before the adoption of this last solution, some other solutions could be yet identified,” she stated. The CAPC calls on Parliament to invite different economic experts to discuss and identify the optimal solution that would affect the citizens the least.
Under the bill, the Ministry of Finance will issue and transmit to the Ministry of Finance state bonds to the nominal value of over 13 billion lei, repayable in 25 years, with the effective interest rate of 5%. In this respect, the CAPC experts said the informative note to the bill does not explain why the term of 25 years and the interest rate of 5% were set given that the contracts for the provision of the loan signed by the National Bank and the three commercial banks stipulate an interest rate of 0.1%.
Expert Viorel Parvan said the informative note does not contain sufficient arguments in favor of the necessity and opportunity of the bill norms, given the social, political and legal importance of such a bill. The author was to present the social and economic effects of the bill’s provisions as their implementation risks causing financial instability and affecting the rights and financial interests of all the citizens.
“The author does not provide information about the way in which the guarantees that were provided by the Government to the National Bank in November 2014 and April 2015 were carried out and about the stage of repaying those loans and recovering the stolen money,” stated Viorel Parvan.
According to him, the informative note to the bill does not contain information about the real situation in the banking sector of Moldova and the recovery of the money. It also does not contain arguments to justify their examination as a matter of urgency, as the Government asked.
The CAPC experts drew attention to the fact that this bill was proposed for debates without legal, anticorruption, economic, financial and scientific appraisals that must determine the rationality of adopting this draft law.
