The National Employers Confederation of Moldova was and remains actively engaged in promoting and implementing the reform of the framework regulating entrepreneurial activity (regulatory reform) that was initiated by the Government in 2004. The goals of this reform are to create a favorable environment for business development and to remove the barriers hindering the starting and development of businesses and these goals fully correspond with the objectives of the Confederation, which celebrates the 20th anniversary of its foundation these days, IPN reports, quoting the Confederation’s chairman Leonid Cerescu.
“At the first stage, called “Guillotine 1”, both the administration and the members of the Confederation became fully involved in the review of regulations worked out by the central public authorities. Consequently, there were reviewed 818 regulations thought up by different authorities. It was decided to essentially review 184 of them, while others were ‘guillotined’ (proposed for abrogation). The Confederation also formulated proposals within the second stage of the regulatory reform “Guillotine 2”, when the laws on entrepreneurial activity were examined. The provisions of these laws were updated in accordance with the economic changes,” stated Leonid Cerescu.
According to him, welcoming this modernization, the National Employers Confederation drew the authorities’ attention to the fact that the business entities face big problems when applying for documents that they need in their work, after being informed about this by the employers associations that form part of it.
“Thus, within the third stage of the given reform, which is symbolically called “Guillotine2+”, there were assessed 200 authorizing documents, 75 of which were to be ‘guillotined’. But the central and local authorities worked out other documents instead of those that were ‘guillotined’. Currently, these documents exceed 400 in number. Not accidentally, the World Bank recently said that this is a very heavy burden for businessman. We will continue to insist on reducing the number of such documents as they hamper work, especially in the case of smaller enterprises, and make the given work inefficient,” stated Cerescu.
“With the assistance of a number of organizations of businessmen, including the Confederation, we obtained the compilation of a Nomenclature of Authorizing Documents. We also demanded that any decision referring to entrepreneurial activity, when it is debated, should be accompanied by an analysis of the regulation impact on the business community and we obtained this. We also agreed that these decisions should be mandatorily discussed within the working group for the regulatory reform. But at practical level, these provisions often are not respected.”
The Confederation also pleads for reducing the number of the services for money provided by the state authorities. “Some of the costs of the over 500 services are not supported by appropriate cost calculation mechanisms. This fact was also mentioned three years ago, when the program for reforming the public services for 2012-2015 was approved. But things didn’t change much so that the employers maintain the earlier declared position that the powers to work out policies and provide services should be strictly delimited between the state institutions and that these services should be modernized, the doublings should be eliminated and the costs should be reduced to a minimum. These costs have an impact on the services and goods supplied by enterprises to consumers,” said the chairman of the National Employers Confederation of Moldova Leonid Cerescu.
