More Than €420 Million Transferred to the Budget Following the Conferences of the Moldovan Support Platform

This year, the Republic of Moldova has had to face a series of overlapping crises as a result of the multifaceted aftermath of the war in Ukraine. Given these conditions, the Ministerial Conference Support Platform for Moldova was launched at the initiative of external development partners to support the Moldovan government’s efforts to overcome unprecedented crisis situations while introducing necessary reforms to modernize the state and strengthen the sustainability of its institutions. During 2022, three meetings of the platform took place – in Berlin in April, in Bucharest in July and in Paris in November, the Ministry of Finance informed, as moldpres.md reported. Thus, this year Moldova succeeded to mobilize external sources for direct budget support from development partners in an amount equivalent to 13.72 billion lei (about 671 million euros), which is 8.64 billion lei (about 422.9 million euros) more than it was planned for the beginning of the budget year. Additional financial means for budget support to mitigate crises were received, in particular, from the IMF – 55.1 million euros and 33.2 million dollars, the World Bank – 101.3 million euros and 9.24 million dollars, the 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 aid for managing the refugee crisis from Ukraine collected an amount equivalent to about 199.7 million lei from external donors, including from the Swiss government – 3.2 million dollars, 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 funding for uncompensated budget support from: (I) the U.S. government – $30 million and (II) the Norwegian government – $14 million. The funds will be channelled through the Trust Fund established by the World Bank. For 2023, it was possible to mobilize external financial assistance for budget support in the amount of 16.87 billion lei (of which 25.6% are non-repayable 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 three Ministerial Conferences Moldova Support Platform (Bucharest, Berlin, Paris), development partners announced financial and humanitarian commitments for our country in the amount equivalent to about EUR 1.4 billion, which are to be allocated and absorbed in the following years. It should be noted that a large 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 European Investment Bank, EBRD, World Bank, Council of Europe Development Bank, etc. have expressed their intention to support infrastructure investment projects for the coming years, which will contribute to the sustainability of our country.