The foreign capital enterprises occupy an important place in the national economy and in the employment sector and their proper management can have beneficial effects on the economic development and social performance. But the state does not take sufficient measures to eliminate the serious problems identified in the field, consider experts of Transparency International – Moldova and the Institute for Development and Social Initiative “Viitorul”, who examined the activity of foreign capital enterprises.
In a news conference at IPN, TI – Moldova expert Ianina Spinei said the diminution of a number of basic indicators of the activity of enterprises is a key problem. Among these factors are the sales revenues, cahs flows from operating activity, net profit and others. Such a situation has persisted for several years. In 2015, the state-owned enterprises reported a cumulatively negative result, the losses totaling over 728 million le. The joint stock companies with state capital sustained losses of 3.5 billion lei. Compared with the situation of 2014, the losses of companies increased considerably: in case of state-owned enterprises 1.5 times, while of joint stock companies with state capital about two times. The upward trend concerning losses is also due to inefficient or fraudulent management of state-run enterprises.
Ianina Spinei noted that the state-owned enterprises continue to accumulate historical debts, including owing to the non-payment of domestic and foreign loans. This affects their financial independence and generates the risk of clearing these debts with state budget funds. The problems in the activity of these enterprises are generated both by their inefficient management by founders, by the fraudulent management of public property and by the influence of political or group interests on the activity of these enterprises, including when naming managers and members of administration boards, when employing and promoting personnel, in procurement, etc.
“Viitorul” expert Veaceslav Ionita said the state manages property worth 31 billion lei and 20% of the employed population works for state-owned enterprises. “The main question is: Why is the state present in the economy? If we do not find an answer to this question and do not assess all the assets to see what is going on, it seems that the state-owned enterprises exist for two reasons – for the people from parties to have a job and for the parties to have money for election campaigns,” he noted.
“Viitorul” executive director Igor Munteanu said analyses show the state is sufficiently rich, but its valuable property is poorly managed. 40% of the enterprises are insolvent and were practically sold to settle their debts. “This is a major problem because as long as these enterprises do not work effectively, they do not generate profit and will not be profitable for the public sector,” he stated.
The experts also consider the preconditions for the deplorable situation in the field reside in the defective legal framework that tolerates the irresponsibility of administrative and inspection bodies and contains restrictive provisions concerning the provision of information by enterprises. Even if a series of changes to the Law on the State-Owned Enterprise and the related regulations were made during the past few years, no radical changes occurred in the management of enterprises. The legal framework on the activity of state-run enterprises should be reviewed based on the corporate governance standards.
