The ambassador of the Republic of Moldova: "Romanian companies, you"re welcome here!"

• The neighboring country wants to attract foreign investors with 0% income and profit taxes, fiscal audits every five years and guaranteed profits

• Iurie Reniţă: "In 2010 we had economic growth and we raised all pensions and wages"

The Republic of Moldova is looking to become one of the best places for Romanian investors to do business in.

For this purpose, our neighbors to the East are proud of their showing off their friendly tax system as well as infrequent fiscal audits from the authorities - in some cases as seldom as once every five years, even though they should officially be taking place every three years.

Some of the fiscal benefits that the neighboring country wants to lure investors with include 0% income and profit taxes, several VAT rates (20%, 8%, 6% and 0%) and lower employee taxes.

The ambassador of the Republic of Moldova in Bucharest, his Excellency Iurie Reniţă, said yesterday, during a business forum: "We are asking Romanian companies to cross over the river Prut and invest with us. Have a little more courage and you will see that profits are guaranteed!"

We need to use the excellent political relations between Kishinev and Bucharest and to extend this cooperation to the economic level. Romania needs to become once again the main trade partner of the Republic of Moldova, like it was before its accession to the EU". The ambassador said that there are signs of a recovery in the economic exchanges between the two countries: "In the first eleven months of the last year we had commercial exchanges of 340 million dollars, up 15% over the similar period of 2009. At the moment, Romania is the third commercial partner of the Republic of Moldova, after the Russian Federation and Ukraine, but we would like it if it were Romania holding the first spot in this ranking".

Iurie Reniţă showed that the Republic of Moldova is a country that is perpetually evolving and which wasn"t affected by the recession: "We had a real economic growth that far surpassed the expectations of the international institutions. According to official figures, the GDP growth was somewhere between 1.35%- 2%, but in reality, the economic growth was far higher, which allowed us to raise wages and pensions, since they were very low. This is something that hasn"t happened in the countries around us".

Even though the fiscal regime of the neighboring country looks very attractive for investors, the costs of setting up a limited liability company are higher than they are in Romania: the minimum share capital required for a company in the Republic of Moldova is 330 Euros, over six times higher than it is Romania (50 Euros).

The representatives of the Embassy of the Republic of Moldova have described for "BURSA" the profile of the Romanian investor that launch companies in the Republic of Moldova: "It"s particularly companies operating in trade, consulting and services. A lot of Romanian companies come from the Banat region of Romania, and not from Moldavia, as it"s been claimed by some. There are also numerous Italian businessmen that own Romanian companies operating in the textile industry, but they are Romanian companies".

According to some unofficial statistics, around 420 Romanian companies are present in Moldova, most of them being located between the Prut and the Dniester river, less frequently in the separatist Transnistria region.