Parliament gave a final reading to the bill to amend the 2021 state budget and allocate the amounts needed to settle the current debts to the Russian gas giant Gazprom, adopting it by the voters of 57 PAS MPs and three MPs of Șor Party. The Communist and Socialist MPs voted against. So as to prevent a halt in gas supplies, the bill was examined as a matter of urgency, at the request of Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilița, IPN reports.

Minister of Finance Dumitru Budianschi said in Parliament that the possible disconnection from the supply of gas is not a media show or an organized act, as they rumor, but is a real risk that can occur if Moldovagaz does not pay the debt for this October and the 50% advance for the natural gas supplied this November. The Government was asked to intervene as Moldovagaz experiences a cash flow deficit and cannot immediately pay the sum asked by the Russian company.

At the start of the sitting, the MPs of the Bloc of Communists and Socialists asked that Premier Gavrilița should be questioned in Parliament so that she explains how the debt owed to Gazprom accumulated. They said it is not clear why 1.4 billion lei needs to be transferred from the state budget to Energocom. The PAS MPs rejected the proposal to question the Premier.

The solution proposed by the Government for clearing the debt owed to Gazprom is a debt transfer contract worth 1.4 billion lei, whereby the state company Energocom would take over a part of the debt owed by the utility Termoelectrica to Moldovagaz. Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Spînu yesterday informed that Gazprom extended the deadline by which Moldovagaz must repay the current debt for the supplied gas until November 26.