Entrepreneurs will submit fewer reports, and further digitalization of public services will continue in 2024.
This was announced by Minister of Economic Development and Digitalization Dumitru Alaiba at a press conference on Tuesday, where he presented the main results of the activities of the department he heads in 2023 and outlined the prospects for 2024. According to him, starting next year, 15 reports will be excluded from the 92 reports requested from economic agents by the State Tax Service and the National Bureau of Statistics. At the same time, another 9 will be digitized and 14 will be optimized. "In 2024, we will continue this work. If in Estonia a small businessman can have only 1 annual report, it means that it is possible in our country as well. In this way we not only support business growth, but also contribute to the creation of a reliable, honest and sustainable economy," said Dumitru Alaiba. The Minister noted great progress in the field of digitalization. Thus, by the end of 2023, about 50% of the 525 public services for business have already been digitized. For comparison, in May this figure was about 38%. According to the Ministry's estimates, the efforts to reduce bureaucracy have saved about 1 billion lei per year. Dumitru Alaiba presented information on business support: grants totaling 260 million lei were allocated in 2023. Also, the governmental programme "373" was launched, through which companies were backed to invest. By the end of the year, investments under this program will amount to more than 650 million lei, and in the near future this figure will exceed 1 billion lei. The beneficiaries of this programme have increased the number of jobs by more than 20 per cent. The Minister recalled the roaming agreement with the European Union and Moldova's accession to the Single Market Programme with the EU; Moldova's accession to the Digital Europe programme was completed; a free trade agreement with the EFTA countries was signed; the authorities managed to extend the liberalized trade with the EU; the preferential trade conditions with the United Kingdom were extended and there is progress in the renewal of the free trade agreement with Turkey, etc. Among the important results of the year, Dumitru Alaiba mentioned the "reform of LLCs" and the reform of patents. According to him, about 90% of more than 4 thousand former patent holders switched to other forms of organization - LLC or independent activity of physical persons in the field of retail trade. After July 1, such economic entities issued more than 2 million cash receipts. Thanks to the reform, which was postponed for 25 years, 325 million lei have been brought out of the shadow. At the same time, Dumitru Alaiba said that the work in this direction will continue. Also in 2023, 6 packages to reduce bureaucracy were approved. Some of them are already applied in practice, while others are being implemented. For example, the certificate of criminal record can be obtained online, and if in 2022 it was requested by 100 thousand citizens, in 2023 - 7 times more, with the certificate delivered to Argentina, Mexico, Canada and other countries. // 26.12.2023 - InfoMarket.
