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bne October 2019 Southeast Europe I 45
$330mn. The European Union, which resumed financial support for Moldova on July 9, will now pay about $55.8mn to Chisinau. NRI’s investment thus amounts to a 24% top-up on the state’s entire FDI inflow compared to last
year, and is higher than the European Union itself allocates in budget support payments. To gauge if this is “abusive” there must be something extraordinary in the concession’s drafting, something seriously awry with Moldovan economic planning, or a very good reason elsewhere to block this deal. Turning away such a serious sum seems peculiar to any Western business interested
in working with Moldova. Investor confidence is falling accordingly.
since August 30, prompted Dodon to announce plans for another airport, this time at Marlculesti. Someone needs an airport, and it is evidently not the citizens of this wonderful country –
as a company which sees a future in Moldova is offering to vastly improve the capacity of the existing one.
Poorly informed and misleading statements by parliamentarians are fuelling attacks against the concessionaire in local media, which the European Union considers a tool to intimidate business.
Disillusioned voters, foreign investors and European diplomats – all sceptical of the government’s commitment
economic announcements. LeBridge Corporation’s September 9 decision to cede its concession on the state tobacco company, Tutun-CTC, has reminded analysts of how in his previous guise as minister of economy and trade, Dodon made consistently peculiar decisions, which left Moldova’s economy in tatters. It is also misleading to the point of hypocrisy, that, in his condemnation of Chisinau International Airport’s new owner, Dodon was neither penitent,
nor even forthcoming, about his past involvement with a duty free deal affecting the airport between 2007-2009. Insistence that a cigarette maker give back its concession acts as a pertinent reminder of how duty free smokes would ultimately cost Moldova millions of dollars in arbitration decisions – these being decisions for which Dodon’s ministry was seemingly responsible.
LeBridge Corporation Limited were
one of the first foreign companies to acquire significant business interests
in Moldova. Their September announcement that pressure would lead them to return the sum paid for the concession in its entirety does not mark the first time that director Franck C. Arif has clashed with Moldova’s president
– via concession deals granted under Dodon in a past life.
On November 13, 2009, Arif – who is a French-Iraqi national – held a grand
“Fiscal accountability to the Moldovan taxpayer by lawmakers seems of less interest than regaining control of an airport”
As the country’s politicians seek to borrow elsewhere, daily attacks on several foreign investors besides
NRI epitomise an attitude to public spending that’s not just sequacious, but dangerous. Fiscal accountability to the Moldovan taxpayer by lawmakers seems of less interest than regaining control of an airport, which, after NRI’s defence of its rights under the concession
to strengthening the rule of law –
had cautiously embraced Sandu’s government. But attacks on foreign companies who bring well paid jobs to a country where unemployment is high, and migration higher, is leading to fear on the ground in Chisinau. Belief that Moldova’s political class remains chiefly concerned with pursuing business as usual has been reinforced by other
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