Moldova to Develop a National Development Plan

The President of Moldova announced that starting next year the Moldovan government will begin working on a 4-5-year national development plan. I took this as good news as I’m not very happy with the current national document that everyone refers to as Moldova’s major development plans: the Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy. This document is narrow in scope and, as the title suggests, its aim is far from setting national development objectives, priorities and guidelines. As a result, Moldova has had no national development plan, which means that development throughout the country has remained largely unplanned, unaccounted for, and thus stagnant. And this is a big problem, which is finally starting to draw some attention.

The regional development policy, slowly but surely taking shape within the Ministry for Local Public Administration, is another approach to the same problem. Addressing regional underdevelopment through targeted public investment programs and support to regional and local capacities is a practice that has worked successfully in many countries, including EU, US, Japan. However, I noticed a high level of resistance to regional development in Moldova. Skepticism and distrust are the attitudes that people most commonly display regarding the Moldovan regional development policy in making. In my view, this resistance is based on lack of information and misunderstanding of the concept itself, as well as on the general distrust towards any governmental policies. I see it as a big challenge for the Moldovan government to try to regain people’s support, and persuade the public opinion about the positive outcomes of its development policies.