Moldova Allocates 550 Million Lei for Energy Compensation Payments

The government has allocated 550 million lei for energy compensation. The rest of the funds are still to be found.

The government has allocated 550 million lei for energy compensation this year, but the sum is not sufficient to cover all the costs. The authorities are seeking additional sources of funding from donors, and if these cannot be identified, the money will have to be covered from the national budget. The statements were made by Prime Minister Vasile Tofan during a podcast.

Vasile Tofan

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According to the Prime Minister, this winter around 670,000 households are set to receive compensation, 50,000 more than last year. Applications are scheduled to open on 2 November, and the exact number of beneficiaries will be known once applications have begun to be submitted.

“We are currently working with donors to identify additional sources of funding. If we cannot find the funds, all compensation will come from the national budget, so it will have a budgetary impact. This means we will have to draw funds from other areas as well, and here I must say that we will have to make cuts in certain areas to further reduce expenditure and eliminate waste,” said Vasile Tofan.

The Prime Minister explained that support will be granted according to households’ level of energy vulnerability, calculated using a formula developed in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Almost half of the households that received compensation last year heated their homes with wood, and for these the impact could be less severe, given that the price of a cubic metre of wood has remained at around 1,600 lei.

Last winter, 2.4 billion lei was spent on compensation. Recently, the Speaker of Parliament, Igor Grosu, stated that the same amount will be allocated this winter as well.

This story was translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence.The translation was also reviewed by the Logos Press editorial team.

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