This is not a joke, nor is it an exaggeration for the sake of a catchy phrase—or, more precisely, it is not just a joke. It is a fairly accurate institutional description of how the Moldovan economy has functioned over the past thirty years.
The country has four mechanisms that absorb a significant portion of the consequences of any decision made by the authorities—whether good, bad, competent, or ill-advised—and prevent those consequences from reaching the population’s actual standard of living in their raw form.
Governments change, coalitions change, rhetoric changes. But these four pillars remain and do their job regardless of who sits in the prime minister’s chair.
Let me clarify right away, so as not to oversimplify: the government, of course, influences regulated rates, taxes, public sector salaries, infrastructure, the investment climate, and the cost of capital—these are direct, measurable levers.
But there is a difference between influencing the numbers in a NARE resolution and influencing whether a specific family will survive a specific winter. And this is where the role of the state is systematically overestimated—simply because we are not accustomed to seriously considering the contribution of what happens outside the state.
Pillar One: Money That Isn’t in the Budget, But Which Keeps the Economy Afloat
Moldova is one of the most remittance-dependent economies in Europe. According to data from the National Bank and estimates from the Prague Process, official remittances through the banking system alone account for about 12% of GDP—already a double-digit figure, though not an astronomical one.
If we take into account cash and informal channels, some expert estimates put the figure significantly higher—but the methodologies vary here, and I would not quote an exact figure without specifying the source. The conservative official estimate is sufficient: this is a private, spontaneous, and unregulated transfer mechanism—essentially a parallel budget that operates without state involvement and without a single government official.
When gas rates rise by 41% but wages remain the same, it is not the government that bridges part of the gap. It is bridged by a son in Italy who sends his mother an extra 100 euros for the winter. The government may raise rates, lower rates, introduce compensation, or cancel compensation—remittances from the diaspora mitigate a significant portion of this shock in advance, simply by virtue of their existence, largely regardless of the quality of any specific rate-setting decision.
Second pillar: savings not reflected in the statistics
The second mechanism is quieter than the first, but no less powerful. A family that doesn’t have enough money to pay a new bill doesn’t march to the government building in protest. Instead, it postpones a visit to the dentist, stops buying meat twice a week, and heats only one room instead of three.
Formally, the bill is paid in full. In reality, it is paid for at the cost of quality of life—a cost that does not appear in any official indicator.
This, too, acts as a buffer that operates entirely independently of how reasonable the tariff policy was in that particular quarter. A bad government decision is absorbed by this mechanism just as successfully as a good one. The only difference is exactly how much has to be cut—but cuts are made in any case.
The third pillar: an economy that officially does not exist
The third mechanism is the informal sector: cash payments, undeclared employment, heating with firewood instead of gas where possible, and unregistered self-employment. Part of the population physically consumes resources in ways that are not fully reflected in official statistics—and therefore are not fully subject to official regulation.
The state even benefits to some extent from the existence of this mechanism: the shadow economy alleviates social pressure more cost-effectively than any subsidy program.
But here, too, the reason is the same—not the wisdom of the government, but a parallel system that operates regardless of what happens in the corridors of power.
Pillar Four: A Vegetable Garden Instead of a Line Item in the Budget
The fourth mechanism is the simplest and most underappreciated. A home garden, and winter preserves—are not merely folkloric elements of Moldovan life, but a functional component of household food security that partially fulfills the role which, in wealthier economies, is assumed by income and social transfers. As long as a family has land and the strength to cultivate it, part of the consumer basket is produced entirely without market involvement and without government intervention.
Why the government’s role here is smaller than it seems
Let’s put it all together. Four mechanisms—remittances, self-restraint, the shadow economy, and the home garden—operate in parallel with the formal economy and absorb a significant portion of the shock generated by government policy.
This does not mean that the government’s decisions are irrelevant. It means that their significance is systematically overestimated by our very way of thinking: we consider the state to be the main actor in the story of a family’s survival, even though these four informal institutions have long been doing the bulk of the work.
The most interesting thing is not that they save the government, but that they deceive it.
And this is where we need to pause and examine the matter more closely, because this is no longer mere commentary but a serious institutional effect.
In a properly functioning system, a bad economic decision comes back to those who made it fairly quickly: consumption falls, non-payments and delinquencies rise, bankruptcies begin, and a political reaction sets in—protests, criticism, a change in course. Feedback works quickly, and that is precisely why those in power quickly realize they were wrong.
In Moldova, this feedback loop is distorted, not absent—and it is distorted precisely by the lag created by the four pillars.
Before the state receives even the slightest signal that it has made a mistake, a household goes through a long chain of events: first, a phone call to a son in Parma asking him to send a little more than usual; then a cutback on all non-essential expenses; then diverting part of their earnings into cash and the informal economy; and only as a last resort—what’s been stored in the basement since fall.
Voting, protest, or public discontent is an event that, in this sequence, doesn’t even come last—it falls somewhere outside the sequence altogether: it rarely comes into play, and even more rarely does it happen in time.
In other words, a huge time lag forms in Moldova between a governance error and its political cost. This does not work in society’s favor but—strange as it may seem—works in the government’s favor for a while, and then abruptly ceases to do so.
For years, the government receives a false signal: rates are rising, incomes are stagnating, but on the surface everything seems to be holding together, which means that the policy, on the whole, is working.
In reality, this is not confirmation that the course is correct, but simply a delay in paying the bill. And when all four mechanisms simultaneously reach their limits, there is almost nothing left to fix—the total bill is presented all at once for several years’ worth of accumulated decisions, rather than just the most recent one.
A nuance that made this article worth writing
This is where the irony ends and the serious discussion begins. All four pillars have a physical limit, and that limit is not infinite—even if it appears to be so for many years in a row.
Transfers depend on donor economies: any recession in Italy or Germany instantly cuts off this flow without any delay. Personal savings are limited by thermodynamic and physiological minimums—there is a temperature below which an apartment becomes uninhabitable in winter. The shadow economy is limited by demographics: it functions where there are villages, social networks, and subsistence farming, but it doesn’t work for urban public-sector employees on official salaries. And a vegetable garden is the most vulnerable of all these mechanisms, because it depends directly on who is still physically capable of tending it, and Moldova’s rural population is aging and shrinking faster than any other demographic segment.
This is precisely why the ease of governance mentioned at the beginning of this article is an illusion with a limited shelf life. As long as at least three of the four pillars are functioning simultaneously, almost any government can afford to make almost any decision without immediate visible consequences—and in doing so, receive deceptive confirmation that it is right.
But the moment all four mechanisms run dry simultaneously—a recession in Europe coincides with a harsh winter, which coincides with a demographic collapse in rural areas—that cushion vanishes all at once. And then the bill is presented not for a single mistake, but for all the years during which the system dutifully sent the government false signals that everything was working.
So yes—agree to lead the government. But keep one thing in mind: you run the country not because of your decisions, but because of someone else’s patience—and the feedback that should correct you is so delayed that you’ll be the last to know about the mistake. Patience, unlike the budget, doesn’t show a deficit in advance—it simply runs out one day.
Dmitry Tereburke,
an expert in real estate appraisal and development
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