December 10, 2010 - A round table discussion on the ink between Migration and Development was organized by the World Bank in collaboration with CIVIS - Centre for Sociological, Politological and Psychological Investigations and Analysis from Moldova and IASCI - International Agency for Source Country Information on December 10, 20.
This round table was chaired by Mr. Iaroslav Baclajanschi - economist of Moldova World Bank country office and benefited from the participation of Mr. Martin Raiser - Country Director for Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, Ms. Valentina Ungureanu - representative of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection as well as of the National Coordinator of Moldova in the MiRPAL (Regional network of the experts in the area of Migration and Remittances from the 9 CIS countries. Many representatives of the government structures, NGOs, think tanks, international development agencies and private sector have also contributed to the discussion.
The whole discussion was centered around general presentation of the recent trends in the area of migration and remittances and their potential outlook in the future prepared by Mr. Baclajanschi as well as around the presentation of the main report prepared by CIVIS and financed by the MiRPAL initiative of the World Bank on the Link between migration and development. The main messages coming out of these presentations were the following:
"Moldova will continue to live with and benefit from remittances in the medium to long term, but their future growth rates most likely will be significantly lower than those registered in 2000-2008. This might have some slow down impact on economic growth in general and government revenues in particular in the next 5-10 years. However pressure for social expenditures will further increase during the same period of time due to declining labor force and rapidly aging population. Therefore, it is very important for Moldova to better use the potential of existing and future inflows of remittances, but at the same time to further develop the second engine of economic growth based on investments and remittances."
"Notwithstanding reforms already implemented by the government, many migrants who want to invest their savings into the economy of Moldova still face the problems of access to information, excessive bureaucratic red tape, corruption, insufficient access to financial resources and other constraints related to business enwironment."
