Parliament Speaker Igor Grosu says the new “Moldova Project” institution announced by Prime Minister Vasile Tofan is intended to make the management of technical assistance projects more efficient. He made the remarks after the opposition criticized the spending planned for the new entity.
Grosu explained that, until now, each ministry implementing technical assistance projects would establish its own project implementation unit, with a manager, accountant and other staff.
“Over time, the following practice emerged. Each ministry, or ministries that had technical assistance projects, would create a project implementation unit. Each one had a manager, an accountant,” Igor Grosu said.
According to him, the Government now proposes bringing these structures together into a single entity that would manage technical assistance projects for several ministries.
The Parliament Speaker also said that such an institution would allow expertise in areas such as public procurement and the preparation of terms of reference for procurements to be concentrated in one place, particularly for large-scale projects.
Regarding the costs of the new structure, estimated at 46 million lei annually, including 36 million lei for the salaries of its 26 employees, Grosu suggested comparing these expenses with the amounts previously spent on project implementation units within individual ministries.
“I would suggest asking the Government for calculations on how much these PIUs, or these implementation units, used to cost individually. I believe it was more,” the Parliament Speaker said.
Grosu acknowledged that if the new entity is tasked with managing projects worth hundreds of millions of lei, the level of remuneration should correspond to the responsibilities involved.
“The fact is that if you create such an agency and assign it to manage hundreds of millions of lei, the remuneration must also correspond to that. But, again, this is a form of optimization,” he said.
The Government plans to establish “Moldova Project” to implement strategic projects. Prime Minister Vasile Tofan announced that the institution will be headed by Mircea Eșanu, the current director of the Public Services Agency.