EU to provide support to improve management of Moldova's National Ecological Fund

Chisinau, 22 June /MOLDPRES/ - The Agriculture, Regional Development and Environment Ministry (MADRM) will benefit from support of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), within the EU4ENVIRONMENT project, in order to improve the management of the National Ecological Fund (NEF). The project’s activities have been recently coordinated by MADRM and OECD at an online meeting.

According to MADRM, the sides coordinated the short-term activities in the second half of 2020 and the long-term ones – for 2021-2022, concomitantly presenting the progress in the implementation of the EU4Environment activities aimed at strengthening the NEF capacities.    

The National Ecological Fund is in the process of reform and needs improvement of the management capacities. The new draft regulation of NEF is under elaboration and the first concept was subjected to domestic consultations. According to governmental procedures, the Regulation might be approved on a period of up to five months. We need elaboration of the Operational Manual for NEF, which is to include: application forms, evaluation forms, forms for reporting and monitoring of the project at all stages; indicators and criteria for the control and performance of quality, as well as the responsibilities of the staff, including its training,’’ a state secretary at the Agriculture, Regional Development and Environment Ministry, Maxim Popov, said.    

The official informed that the short-term expectations were to consolidate and revise the NEF’s draft regulation, to work out the Operational Manual, based on the EU regulation and practices and to develop the employees’ capacities. ‘’On a long-term (2021-2022), our goals are to assess the framework of payments and environment taxes, to ensure and improve the NEF’s income sources and connect the use of the means received from these payments for environment problems, from which also the proposal on new administrative and economic mechanisms of ways of operation of NEF,’’ Popov noted.    

The EU4Environment project is financed by the European Union and has the goal to back those six Eastern Partnership countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine and to preserve the natural capital and enhance the people’s well-being from the viewpoint of the environment, showing and de-blocking the opportunities for greener growth and establishing mechanisms for a better management of risks and impacts on the environment. The project, with a budget of 20 million euros, is implemented by five partner organizations: OECD, UN Economic Commission for Europe, UN Environment, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the World Bank on the period 2019-2022.