TIRASPOL, December 8 (Itar-Tass) – Moldova’s much-troubled breakaway Dniester region /aka Transdnestria in the West/ has received a third tranche of financial aid from Russia in the amount of 100 million rubles /USD 1=RUB 31.5/.
The press service of the unrecognized Dniester Republic’s parliament said this is the last tranche of a package of aid totaling 300 million rubles that Moscow allocated in 2011.
The Dniester authorities hope Russia will grant aid next year, too. An appeal the republic’s MPs sent to the State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament, said: “The Russian humanitarian project became vital for the socially insecure groups of the population.”
“For the past four years, Russian aid has helped alleviate the social burdens and tension in the Dniester region,” the parliament said.
The regional budget will run into a huge deficit next year, as its revenues will cover only a half of spending, the statement said. A similar situation is taking shape in the Pension Fund and the size of minimum pension will stand at a mere 50% percent of the subsistence wage.
Russia launched a humanitarian project to aid the Dniester region in 2007 after an appeal of the Obnovleniye /Renovation/ party’s parliamentary faction to the State Duma.
Remittances of Russian aid to the unrecognized republic, the predominantly non-Moldovan population of which has been seeking independence and state sovereignty since 1991, have exceeded 2 billion rubles since the start of the project.
The monies have been mostly distributed as soft loans to the farming sector and the farmers used them for an overhaul of machinery and equipment, as well as for planting new gardens.
The monies repaid by the farmers today are given out anew in the form of loans.
The issuance of aid was suspended for some time in 2010 in the aftermath of reports on possible swindling with the financial resources coming from Russia. However, it was resumed after the Dniester authorities managed to prove they were using the aid precisely for the designated purposes.