The grants obtained by Moldova from outside this year will be under the forecast level. They will total at most 900 million lei at this yearend, as opposed to the planned 2.8 billion lei. Experts of the Institute for Development and Social Initiative “Viitorul” forecast that the revenues collected into the 2018 national public budget will rise based on taxes and social and health insurance contributions, IPN reports.
According to the forecasts, the budget will be fulfilled this year, but this will be rather a survival, not a development budget. The Government will be able to pay pensions and salaries, but this will be the fourth consecutive year that the authorities limit investments in infrastructure.
The Government manages to collect money into the budget at the people’s expense. For the second year in a row, the budget revenues are higher than the planned ones. Last year these were by 2.3 billion lei larger, while this year they are expected to be by 2.6 billion lei larger.
The experts said the budget revenues increased, while the population’s incomes decreased. “Being unable to restore the relations with the foreign partners in the middle of a crisis, the Government found the only realistic solution – to increase the fiscal burden borne by the citizens,” said the experts.
According to the economists of “Viitorul”, after the banking theft and now amid the political crisis, the external financial assistance diminished dramatically. If the external financing opportunities had remained at the level of 2014, this year Moldova should have benefited from grants of 5.6 billion lei, but will receive only 900 million lei. A sum of 14.7 billion lei failed to be obtained during the past four years. This money was to go to modernize road infrastructure, to repair hospitals and schools, to do reforms in the justice sector, etc.
