Over 420 million euros have been transferred to the state budget following this year's three conferences within the Moldova Support Platform.
The Ministry of Finance informed about this, reminding that this year Moldova had to face a number of overlapping crises as a result of multidimensional consequences of the war in Ukraine: on the one hand, a humanitarian crisis caused by the wave of refugees, which the Moldovan authorities have to manage, on the other hand, an economic crisis caused by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and amplified by the energy crisis, strong inflationary pressure, loss of some markets and sales chains in the region due to the war, additional budgetary expenditures to mitigate the effects of crises on the population and business environment, etc. Given these circumstances, in order to support the Moldovan government's efforts to overcome unprecedented crisis situations, while implementing the necessary reforms to modernize the state and strengthen the sustainability of its institutions, the Moldova Support Platform conference was launched at the initiative of external development partners. In 2022, three meetings of the platform took place - in Berlin (April), Bucharest (July) and Paris (November). According to the Ministry of Finance, this year Moldova succeeded to mobilize external sources for direct budget support from development partners in the amount equivalent to 13.72 billion lei (about 671 million euros), which is 8.64 billion lei (about 422.9 million euros) more than was planned at the beginning of the budget year. Additional funds for budget support to mitigate crises were received from the following donors: IMF - 55.1 million euros and $33.2 million, World Bank - 101.3 million euros and $9.24 million euros, European Commission - 75 million euros, French Development Agency - 75 million euros, German Government - 40 million euros, Romanian Government - 10.49 million euros and Polish Government - 20 million euros. Also, the special account opened by the Ministry of Finance to collect financial donations intended for humanitarian assistance for managing the refugee crisis from Ukraine has collected the equivalent of about 199.7 million lei from external donors, including from the Swiss Government - $3.2 million, Sweden - 3.66 million euros, Lithuania - 3.25 million euros, Slovakia - 0.1 million euros and Estonia - 0.1 million euros. Additionally, by the end of the year, the state budget expects financial means for gratuitous budget support from: the US Government - $30 million and the Norwegian Government - $14 million. For 2023, external financial assistance for budget support was mobilized in an amount of 16.87 billion lei (of which 25.6% are uncompensated funds), of which about 160.5 million euros (about 3.3 billion lei) are financial commitments announced at the Paris Conference (November 21). During the 3 Moldova Support Platform conferences development partners announced financial and humanitarian commitments for our country amounting to about 1.4 billion euros, which are to be disbursed and absorbed in the coming years. The Ministry of Finance specified that a considerable part of the support announced within the Moldova Support Platform is not managed by the government, but by UN agencies and the private sector, beneficiaries of various investment projects and guarantee schemes. At the same time, some of the external creditors, such as the European Investment Bank, the EBRD, the World Bank, the Council of Europe Development Bank, etc., have expressed their intention to support infrastructure investment projects in the coming years, which will contribute to the sustainability of our country. // 30.12.2022 – InfoMarket
