Moldova is preparing for an emergency, having failed to pay off its debt to Gazprom
The Russian Gazprom may stop gas supplies to Moldova if payments for the current month are not made tomorrow.
This was stated by the Prime Minister of Moldova Natalia Gavrilitsa, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Yesterday the Gazprom company sent an official letter to Moldovagaz, in which it warned of its intention to stop gas supplies in case of non-payment by January 20. “Moldovagaz did not have time to collect the money,” Gavrilitsa said.
She plans to take the initiative to introduce a state of emergency in the energy sector.
The Russian monopolist has not yet commented on the situation. Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov did this for him.
Gazprom as a company must sell goods and receive money for it. He cannot give away the goods for free. Therefore, this is more of a commercial issue. There is no double bottom here,” he said.
The Moldovan government blames the Moldovagaz enterprise for the current situation, which will be able to collect only 38 of the required 63 million dollars by tomorrow.
“We will see how the situation develops in the next few days, but judging by the situation that has developed at the moment, I think that we will not be able to pay until January 20,” said the head of Moldovagaz, Vadim Ceban.
The Moldovan government contributed a lot to ensuring that Moldovagaz found itself in such a situation. Despite the requests of this enterprise, the heat tariff was not increased. To be fair, it must be said that the current tariff has brought Moldovans to panic; now the government is trying to find funds to pay compensation. But this does not change the economic situation as a whole. Consumers pay less than Moldovagaz owes to Gazprom, and the authorities refuse to help the enterprise, at least by exempting it from part of the taxes.
“All banks refused to provide us with loans. The reason is the inability to provide banks with real estate collateral that meets the requirements and criteria,” Cheban complains.
He invites thermal power plants, the main consumers of fuel, to take out loans from international financial organizations. The Moldovan government, which boasts of its handshake in Europe, is in no hurry to help solve this problem. It also refused to provide guarantees to Moldovan banks so that they would agree to lend to Moldovagaz.
The reason for this demonstrative indifference is purely political. 50% of Moldovagaz belongs to Gazprom, which the pro-Western Maia Sandu frankly does not like. She would be happy to bring an enterprise with “civilizationally alien” capital to bankruptcy and bring representatives of the EU or the USA into the country.
In the meantime, the government expects that the loan to Moldovagaz will be provided by... Gazprom. Thus, Moldova will be supported by Russia, without considering itself obligated for anything. Such an “elegant” scheme may well work, because formally, under the Moldovan contract, pro-Russian Transnistria also receives gas.
“If Gazprom stops gas supplies, then the Kremlin regime is trying to break the freedom and independence of Moldova. If Gazprom makes a deferment on its debts, it means the Kremlin regime was unable to break the freedom and independence of Moldova. In both cases, the Moldovan government of “good people” did well!”, Moldovan journalist Alexander Stakhursky commented on the situation.
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