The impact of financial and economic crisis on the family and child in the Republic of Moldova and suggested policy responses November 10 th, 2009

2 Main concerns (1) Crisis deeply affected the households with children, leading to lower incomes, difficulties to pay the heating and electricity bills and reductions in the food consumption; Families with numerous children have already started to cut the expenditures on fields which will play a crucial role on heath and future development of the children, keeping them in the poverty cycle; Families with 3 and more children spent 3 times less for education, 2 times less for health care services, 30% less for dwelling maintenance and food as compared to a family with 1 child;

3 The hole in CNAS budget as at end of August 2009, was 600 million MDL and transfers to LPA 182 million MDL; Data only from Q but in the following months the situation was getting even worse; Current social protection mechanism based on categories is not protecting the poor, and the means testing mechanism is not reaching the poor, it is too bureaucratic and discourage the vulnerable people to apply; Not clear visions on how to protect the poor during the crisis. Main Concerns (2)

4 Policy suggestions (1)  Better know the real situation in the country, particularly in the most deprived rural areas, in order to develop adequate policy response  NBS to collect disaggregated data on related to food consumption per member of household, access to health services and school absenteeism  Roll over the Social Support Programme BUT making it more accessible and simple for the most vulnerable

5 Policy suggestions (2)  Abolish the child benefit of 50 MDL per child aged 1.5 to 16 years Nearly all families who quality for this payment qualify for social support, so it is more efficient to abolish this benefit. The savings of approximately 20M lei/year could be included in the Social Support budget line  Increase the budget of Social Support Programme by reduction of the number of categories benefiting from nominal compensations  Promote further development of a new social assistance scheme in strong correlation with the National Programme to Develop an Integrated System of Social Services for

Policy suggestions (3)  Reduce the administrative costs of CNAS should be among top priorities of the new Moldovan Government  Optimize the school network and reform the financing mechanism in education sector  Redirect the expenditures in education to ensure the access to preschool education for all children of Moldova  Abolish the unofficial payments in preschool institutions  Increase school autonomy and decentralization in education sector Distribution of human resources within the social sector RFSAP; 50; 4% RCMVE; 100; 8% MSPFC; 69; 5% NHSI; 1.100; 83%

7 Policy suggestions (4)  Promote real decentralization and empowerment of local authorities in targeting the social service delivery to the most affected members of community  Initiate urgently a public works programme, particularly in the most affected region: Centre and South.  Ensure that further development of community based centers (MSIF,WB,EC) is based on real needs of communities and are long term sustainable;  Revitalize the inter-ministerial cooperation and interaction in child related issues, including through cross-sectorial programme budgeting;  Ensure active coordination and leading role of GoM in external assistance

8 Partnership and advocacy (1/2) To monitor properly how the crisis affected the families and children in addition to full integration of Social exclusion Model in NBS and permanent collection of more exact data on health and education, a community based monitoring system needs to be established, based on the model currently developed jointly by Moldovan Government, UNDP, UNICEF and UNFEM

Partnership and advocacy (2/2) The Policy Notes, prepared by developing partners for the New Moldovan Government, with concrete short and medium term actions to reduce the impact of crisis, contributes to facilitate the recession of Moldova from economic and social crisis UNICEF and other partners common front, contributes to safeguard the social safety nets Good cooperation with IMF is crucial during the crisis time and brought good results in Moldova (agreement with IMF reached)

Thank You