The share of Moldova’s Road Fund in the country’s State Budget and GDP in 2013 is quite impressive - almost 5.5% of State Budget and over 1.2% of GDP, compared to 1% of GDP for other countries with more funds allotted to road development and with a higher spending capacity on road infrastructure.
In the last two years, the amount of resources dedicated to road maintenance has increased significantly, from 1.03 billion lei ($51.6 million*) in 2012 to 1.366 billion lei ($68.3 million) in 2014. Such a fast growth pace became a challenge in terms of efficiently using resources, raising issues concerning the institutional capacity and that of the market to cope with this rapid growth, especially given the lack of transparency, poor planning and arbitrary decisions that take place of the Road Fund.
The main issues in the Road Fund's activity include poor planning of the revenue, which leads to failure to cash-in at least 4 million lei ($200,000) annually; arbitrary allocation of resources from the Road Fund – with decisions on allocations that follow political reasons rather than the public interest; lack of transparency of the Road Fund’s activity, which publishes shallow progress reports with no clear rationale on how the money were spent – which leads to a procurement process with serious issues in terms of competition, efficiency and work quality.
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Raportul a fost elaborat de Centrul Analitic Independent Expert-Grup în cadrul proiectului „Procesul bugetar în Republica Moldova: monitorizarea transparenței și promovarea controlului public” finanțat de Fundația Soros-Moldova.