The mayors of several settlements say they encounter difficulties in implementing the Law on Local Public Finance, which came into force earlier this year. The heads of settlement governments claim that the law is a good one and facilitates their work, but they would have a series of recommendations to the central authorities in order to remove the emerging obstacles. This subject has been discussed on Wednesday, March 18, during the hearings organized by the Committee on Public Administration, Regional Development, Environment and Climate Change, as IPN reports.

The President of the Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova, Tatiana Badan, said that the identified difficulties impeded the proper operation of public institutions. Particularly the matter concerns the lack of liquidity in the beginning of the year and the granting of tax exemptions out of the local budgets without proper coverage.

The mayor of the village of Festelita in the Stefan Voda rayon, Nicolae Tudoreanu, said that inflation processes were not taken into account while calculating transfers. ‘Previously, account inflation and the gradual increase in wages were taken into account when making medium term calculations, and they were offset by means of transfers. Nowadays, under the new system we cannot manage these things in economic terms, both inflation and salary increase for the employees of institutions financed from the local budget have become the task of the local public authorities’, noted Tudoreanu.

The Mayor of Orhei, Vitalie Colun, noted that the Tax Code contained the national classifier on units of trade and service providers, but did not specify all services provided in the town and, for that reason, some traders who earned money in that territory did not pay any local taxes. The mayor said that the matter required legislative amendments.

The mayors have also complained of the refusal of economic agents to supply foodstuffs to public institutions due to MDL devaluation, thus the rigid procurement system was one of the issues that needed to be tackled.

The Law on Local Public Finance was voted in the final reading by the Parliament on 1 November 2014, and came into force on 01 January 2015.