OREANDA-NEWS. Prime Minister Pavel Filip today participated in the unveiling of an assessment report on the Moldovan public administration. The document was worked out within the SIGMA (Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) project. Attending the event were also EU Ambassador to Chisinau Pirkka Tapiola, representatives of Moldova’s development partners and local public authorities.   

In his speech, the prime minister said that the public administration reform, both centrally and locally, was one of the arrears in implementing the Moldova-EU Association Agreement. Filip voiced the government’s firm determination to achieve this objective, which has an important role in Moldova’s development in all sectors. “When taking over the mandate of prime minister, I set that one of priority strategies is to be the public administration reform, as it is related to many other reforms which must be carried out in Moldova. We need a strong public administration, which is to be, in fact, the citizen’s ally,” Pavel Filip said.   

In this respect, the prime minister appreciated the role of the assessment report on the Moldovan public administration, developed by SIGMA experts, stressing that the recommendations and suggestions contained in this document were at the basis of elaborating the new strategy of reforming the Moldovan public administration.  

The prime minister noted that a precondition of the reform’s success was the existence of a close and sustainable cooperation with the civil society, private sector, academic and media institutions, as well as with the development partners. In this context, the government is set to consult the draft strategy with all interested sides, as well as to approve it in early next June, with the goal to edify a responsible and modern public administration.   

For his part, EU Ambassador to Moldova Pirkka Tapiola reiterated the EU’s support for Moldova in promoting reforms. Tapiola also said that SIGMA represented a joint initiative of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development of the European Union, and its principal goal was to strengthen the capacities of Moldova’s public sector, thus contributing to promotion of an efficient governance and social and economic development of Moldova.

Among the main recommendations contained in the SIGMA Report, there are: developing a comprehensive strategic framework for defining the reforms in public administration, consolidating mechanisms of coordination and monitoring the capacities at the administrative and political levels, as well as providing financial resources for implementing the strategic documents and the reforms planned.    

Also today, participants in the second meeting of the National Council for Public Administration Reform, held after the launch of the SIGMA Report, presented the initial draft of the strategy of the public administration reform for 2016-2020.

The concerned document provides for an integrated approach of the Reform of the Central Public Administration and Local Public Administration. Among the  reform’s main objectives, there are: rationalizing the government’s structure, reducing the fragmentation of the administrative and territorial structure and ensuring the work of an efficient system of monitoring, enhancing responsibility and transparency of the performance of authorities, public institutions and state economic entities.