Reports
IOM TO INFORM MOLDOVAN MIGRANTS CONCERNING THEIR INVESTMENT POSSIBILITIES
Chisinau. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) Mission to Moldova, together with the Ministry of Economy and Trade of Moldova have announced the launching of a comprehensive mass media campaign in Moldova and in the main destination countries addressed to Moldovan migrants, their families and other remittance recipients.
Project Manager Genadie Cretu told a news conference in Infotag today that the campaign’s ultimate goal is to facilitate Moldovan labor migrants’ coming back home and to help them get employed here.
“The project’s aim is to help Moldovan migrants to invest in entrepreneurship and to convince them of the advisability of using official ways of remitting money home and opening bank accounts here”, Cretu said.
Currently, he said, Moldovan gastarbeiters use mainly unofficial channels for remitting money due to their insufficiently high awareness of financial practices and their weak trust in the Moldovan banking system.
According to a recent IOM research, over 35% Moldovan households receive money from abroad, and Moldova is among the world leaders in terms of the per capita remittances indicator. In 2007, for instance, Moldovan gastarbeiters pumped home a sum of money equivalent to nearly 36% of the nation’s gross domestic product.
Vasile Cantarji of CBS-AXA Center for Sociological Researches and Marketing said that, according to the Center’s estimates, 63% remittance recipients keep the money at home and only 7% households invested their money in private businesses. Sixty-four percent gastarbeiters stated that if only they had had US$30,000, they would use it for consumption, and only 7% would invest in entrepreneurship.
Cantarji presumes the mass media are wrong when they say that as many as about a million Moldovans have quitted their native country for jobs, for such a figure would mean 80% of the nation’s workable populace, which is unlikely. According to citizens’ organizations and official statistics, the migrants’ strength is estimated to be 350 thousand persons.
The project is funded by the European Commission and co-funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
