Chicu on a Russian loan: 4.2 billion Lei Have Already Been Budgeted

We took measures to retain all social payments in full, and blocked non-priority expenses. But we hope to resume negotiations with the Russian Federation and still get a Russian loan. We really need it. The Prime Minister of the Republic of Moldova, Ion Chicu, informed about this in the program “Glavnyi Vopros” with Julia Fedorova, news.md reports. “Can Moldova reckon not only on resuming the Russian loan discussions, but also on obtaining it?” the program host asked. “Of course, we hope and reckon on. I want to note that the previous agreement version  contained no political conditions. Here they said that the country would get under some kind of influence. Those were purely financial, banking conditions. Everyone understands that now, even those who make noise. We need this money, it is in the budget for this year - 4.2 billion lei,” the prime minister said. Chicu said that now we need to hear the Russian Federation's position. It was one thing when we signed the agreement in early April, now it is June. "There are no promises about the loan so far. In the meantime, our financiers are building their work based on the scenario if this money won't be received. We blocked all non-priority costs at the central level. Local authorities decide on their own how to act,” Chicu said. "Once you stated that the absence of a Russian loan will affect social payments," the program host recalled. "No, we will make these payments in any case. I made a statement on April 23, based on that situation. We had an arrears of income of 960 million lei compared to last year. When they blocked these 4 billion, we made estimates in the Ministry of Finance and saw that in June we won’t be able to pay," Chicu said. The prime minister recalled that on that day, April 23, on Friday, they ratified the agreement with the IMF. "These fellows then said that on April 24 they would go to the Constitutional Court and would scale that back. If they had succeeded, there would have been a complete collapse. But they decided to wait until Monday, they do not like to work on Fridays. And we quickly promulgated the law, published it on a monitor on Saturday, and on Monday we took money from the National Bank. If we hadn’t done this, they would have also cut off this loan," the Prime Minister said.