INEFFICIENT STATE COMPANIES SHOULD BE PRIVATIZED - ECONOMY MINISTER

If a public company is inefficient, it should be privatized, as there is no need to preserve the monopoly, maintains Minister of Economy and Infrastructure Chiril Gaburici.

At the Friday's Parliament sitting, he said that maybe there are much more qualified specialists, who can improve the situation on enterprises and make them profitable. Another variant is to identify competent people and appoint them to leading positions in companies.

"We visited the National Railroad Company of Moldova (CFM). I bought a Chisinau-Ungheni ticket, which costs 22 lei. In the train there were 200-300 people, moreover not all of them were traveling to Ungheni, thus it turns out just 6 thousand lei of revenues for trip in both directions. CFM officials said that the prime cost of this trip is 25 thousand lei. It is obvious that the railroad transport in our country has a social function, but we have to seek solution for improving the situation", he said.

Gaburici said that currently, the enterprise is working on liquidating salary arrears. As of today, the CFM owes to its workers salary for three months. The enterprise also faces the problem of lack of freight cars, which leads to lost profit.

"We are trying to seek solutions for other enterprises as well, but if there is possibility to attract good specialists or partners, who will engage in sector development, we have to do this [denationalization]", the minister said.

Democrat MP Corneliu Dudnic maintains that if the authorities cannot be an efficient manager, they should take resolute decisions and give state enterprises in hands of private businesses, which will be paying taxes and will preserve or even will raise the number of jobs.

Chiril Gaburici came to the Parliament in connection with the draft resolution on the vote of no confidence in him, submitted by the Party of Socialists. Hearing in this concern lasted over two hours. According to the legislation, for initiating the vote of no-confidence in the Government in general, legislative initiative should be supported by over one-fourth of MPs (26 of 101), while for dismissing one minister - not less than 15 MPs of the Parliament. The decision on dismissal is taken by the majority of votes - 51 of 101.