. /.RESTRICTEDWORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/ACC/MOL/34
17 November 2000
(00-4899)
Working Party on the
Accession of MoldovaOriginal:  English
ACCESSION OF THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA
Price Regulation
The Permanent Mission of the Republic of Moldova has submitted the following Informative
Note on the Regulation of Price Controls in the Republic of Moldova.
_______________
Informative Note on the Regulation of Price Controls in the Republic of Moldova
1. The new draft law on prices, which currently is in the third reading in the Parliament of
Republic of Moldova, provides new provisions on price control regulation in Republic ofMoldova. This law sets the legal grounds for implementing an uniform state policy as regards
prices and identifies the rights, duties and responsibilities of the public administration
authorities and other authorities entitled to set and apply prices for the production and
commercialisation of goods and services, so as to protect suppliers’ and consumers’ rights.
The present draft law will be applicable to all legal and natural persons, regardless their type
of ownership and form of administration, whose main activity is to produce and
commercialise goods and services.
2. The draft law grants the right to legal and natural persons to independently fix the prices and
tariffs for their goods and services, according to the contracts they have concluded.
3. Nevertheless, these entities will not benefit from this right where the state regulates prices
according to the present draft law. The state regulates the prices of products that constitute a
natural monopoly of the state, the prices of  goods and services used for providing socialassistance to the population, and the price of products produced by monopolist enterprises.
For this purpose, the law expressly lists those goods and services where the state sets prices,
meaning that no other goods and services will be treated according to this regime. Moreover,
both legal and natural persons have the right to contest in court the decisions of the
administrative authorities regarding the setting and application of prices.
4. Another benefit of the present draft law is that it expressly stipulates the methods of price
regulation by the state, which is done by:
i) approval of:
- regulated price/tariffs;
- ceiling levels of prices/tariffs;
- limits on profits;
- ceiling levels for mark-ups.WT/ACC/MOL/34
Page 2
ii) granting financial resources to certain branches of the national economy as well as to
some enterprises in the form of compensation to prices, donations, preferential loans
and other facilities in order to maintain the guaranteed level of prices for some goods
and services of social importance.
5. The implementation provisions of the draft law state that the Government of the Republic of
Moldova, within two months, has to bring all its acts into compliance with the Law on Prices
and will re-examine and abrogate administrative acts which contradict the present law.
6. This implies that according to the provisions of this law, the Government Decision on state
co-ordination and the regulation of measures regarding prices/tariffs, No. 547 of
4 August 2000, will be no more applicable. In comparison with this Government Decision the
new law decreases the number of goods and services for which prices are set by the state,reducing in this way the incidence of the prices regulated by the state. From the list of goods
and service for which prices are set by the state, which is contained in the Government
Decision, the following goods and services were excluded in the corresponding list contained
in the draft law on prices:
- natural compressed gas, fuel for cars using gas;
- services in technical inventory of buildings, in measuring and keeping the record of
lands;
- railway transportation of goods;
- coal commercialised by State Company “Moldova-Combustibil”.
In addition, the draft law specifies the notary services for which prices are set by the state,
while the Government Decision controlled prices of the notary services in general. This
means that the law reduced the incidence of the prices regulated by the state within this
category of services.
6. The draft law also sets some duties for legal and natural persons in order to prevent the
monopoly on the market and to facilitate the process of price control by administrativeauthorities, where these are empowered to set the prices.
7. In conclusion, the law grants more freedom to legal and natural persons who produce and
commercialise goods and services in setting prices. It provides an exhaustive list of those
goods and services where the state regulates the prices and identifies the authorities invested
with these prerogatives. It reduces the number of goods and services the price for which are
controlled.
In addition, the law gives the possibility to legal and natural persons to contest the decisions
taken by the authorities in this way protecting the economic entities.
__________