Fiscal Lottery to be first ever held in Moldova

Chisinau, 17 December /MOLDPRES/ - A Fiscal Lottery will take place in Moldova for the first time ever.  

The overall fund of the winnings for carrying out the Fiscal Lottery amount to 1,000,000 lei and people who pay by card in commercial units or units for providing services will be nominated as winners. The contest will be organized in four stages by the State Fiscal Service (SFS); additionally, two special editions will be held on the occasion of the Easter and winter holidays, according to a regulation on the carrying out of the Fiscal Lottery, approved by the cabinet today.    

The contest’s organization is aimed at “combating the fiscal evasion through limiting the payments in cash. The holding of the Fiscal Lottery has the goal to raise citizens’ awareness about the carrying out of non-cash payments by using bank cards. Owners of banks cards issued by a licenced issuing commercial bank from Moldova, who carried out transactions on the payment of goods/services, can participate in the contest.   

At each stage of the Lottery, a drawing of lots will be made for the transactions worth more than 30 Moldovan lei, made with cards at Points of Sate (POS) served by licenced issuing commercial banks from Moldova. The information about the transactions will be presented to SFS by licenced commercial banks.  

A number of 175 prizes worth 1,000 lei each will be provided for each stage, by drawing of lots and for the special editions – 100 prizes worth 1,500 lei each, on the occasion of the Easter holidays and 100 prizes worth 1,500 lei on the occasion of the winter holidays.

The prizes will be transferred to winners on cards’ accounts in Moldovan lei in 10 days after the publication of the list of winners on the official webpage of the State Fiscal Service at the latest.

According to the National Bank of Moldova (BNM), more than 55 per cent of the number of operations with cards issued in Moldova, carried out in the country in the first nine months of 2019, represented non-cash payments. The number of non-cash payments by electronic payment instruments amounted to 26.4 million, out of a total number of 47.3 million.  

BNM’s data shows that, despite the large number of transactions, the value of the payments by card is much lower than the taking out of cash, although it is continuously increasing. The market of non-cash payments, carried out in the country with cards issued in Moldova, reached the value of 7.4 billion lei in the first nine months of this year. The payments by electronic payment instruments at trade networks, fuel-supply stations or other units for providing services had a share of 16.47 per cent of the overall value of the operations.  

A number of about 19,900 POS, set in networks of shops, fuel-supply stations and other units for providing services or commerce are at the disposal of the owners of those 1.96 million cards in circulation at the end of the second quarter of 2019. As many as 1,474 new Points of Sale were set this year alone.