OREANDA-NEWS. April 08, 2014. A factory producing electric cables - Gebauer&Griller – was opened in northern Balti city. Attending the inauguration, Deputy Prime Minister, Economics Minister Valeriu Lazar highlighted that the new enterprise, with an investment of 12 million dollars, represented a symbol of Moldova’s progress towards more complex economic activities, with high valued added, the Economics Ministry’s information and media communication service has reported.

The company, which started working in last autumn, has 85 employees and recorded sales of 54 million lei in 2013, with 20 per cent of the goods supplied to another resident of the Balti Free Economic Zone (FEZ) – Draexlmaer automotive company, and the other 80 per cent of goods exported.

G&G was set up in 1940 and has its headquarters in Vienna, Austria. With two factories in Austria, one in the Czech Republic, Bangalore and Moldova each, G&G had a turnover of 360 million euros and 2,096 employees in 2012. The company’s products assortment includes automotive cables, control cables for lifts and cables buses, telecommunications wires, audio/video-cables and special ones. The GG Cables&Wires EE Company has set the copper wire standing and extruding processes in Balti.

Lazar also underlined that, in the conditions of international investments competition between countries, the presence of such investors in Moldova would have not been possible without tan essential contribution of the state, which created friendly conditions for industrial development. The minister highlighted the attractiveness of the free economic zones from Moldova, which provided significant impetuses, among which the income tax exemption for a three-year period, if 1 million dollar investments are placed, and for a five-year period, if at least 5 million dollar investments are made, exemption from VAT on products manufactured in the area and exported from Moldova, etc.

At the same time, Lazar said that the state provide the investors with the needed infrastructure for development. Thus, a 2-kilometer-long sewerage network under pressure and an aqueduct for the subzone 2 of the Balti ZEL were constructed, the access road to the subzone 1 was rebuilt with a 16-million-lei-worth investment of the Regional Development Fund and sources of the Balti ZEL administration, etc.

Once the number of big industrial enterprises was on the rise, the Economics Ministry also initiated the training of engineers and workers, in order to meet the need of labour force in the industrial sector. An active training centre will be opened in the subzone 4 Straseni, of the Balti FEZ, where specialists and workers will be trained for resident companies, in particular, and branches of the national economy, in general, by using methods of the dual and trial training system.