Andrei Spynu, Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development, has said that the debt of Chisinau to the Russian company Gazprom will be paid before the end of this week
Speaking to Publika TV channel, Spynu explained that during the state of emergency, which was imposed amid an acute gas shortage, the state enterprise Energocom was allocated 1.7 billion lei (almost 100 million dollars) from the budget to buy blue fuel from alternative sources.
“Of this amount, about 300 million lei (about $17 million) were used to buy missing amounts of gas. The remaining 1.4 billion lei will be used to pay the current expenses of Moldovagaz for October-November”, – Interfax quoted the deputy prime minister as saying.
Spinu stressed that Chisinau is working on the second reading of a resolution in parliament that would make it possible to allocate money to Energocom and pay the debt to Gazprom.
Russian senator Aleksey Pushkov said that Moscow should not be surprised by the behaviour of the Moldovan authorities. According to experts, problems with the payment of Chisinau’s debt to Gazprom have contributed to new tensions between Moldova and Russia.