Acting Foreign Minister of the PMR Vitaly Ignatiev met with the EUBAM delegation at the PMR’s MFA today. The delegation included Head of EUBAM Ambassador Andrew Tesoriere, as well as representatives of a number of structural units of EUBAM. From the Pridnestrovian side the meeting was also attended by Minister of Economic Development of the PMR Alevtina Slinchenko and Chairperson of the State Customs Committee of the PMR Yury Gervazyuk.
The subject of the meeting was a series of relevant aspects of interaction between Pridnestrovie and EUBAM, in particular in the exchange of information used by the Mission in preparing report on the foreign economic activity of Pridnestrovie.
We remind that on August 27, 2015 the Ministry of Economic Development of the PMR published a formal statement in which it stated about tendentious and unfair approach of EUBAM to the analysis of indexes of foreign economic activity of Pridnestrovie. The statement noted that the figures for July 2015 cited by EUBAM experts “are provided exclusively for economic agents registered in Moldova and carried out foreign trade operations through the customs authorities of the RM, while indexes of Pridnestrovian trade with the Republic of Moldova, as well as in a number of cases, indexes of trade with Ukraine are excluded from the statistics.” As a result, indexes of the Pridnestrovian export and import in the report of EUBAM are increased excessively by tens of percent.
That incident was the subject of discussion at the meeting of Deputy Prime Minister of the PMR for International Cooperation, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nina Shtanski with Andrew Tesoriere and Head of EU Delegation in Moldova Pirkka Tapiola, during the discussion of the problem the sides agreed to hold a special meeting between representatives of EUBAM and Pridnestrovie to clarify the existing disagreements and to prevent such distortion of data in the future.
As said by Vitaly Ignatiev at today's meeting, Pridnestrovie considered the mentioned report of EUBAM as unfounded and not reflected the real situation in the field of foreign economic activity of Pridnestrovie. In this context, the diplomat expressed hope that the existing disagreements would be resolved. “We believe that in this situation we will be able to agree on the parameters that will be used by the Mission to draw up a report in order to ensure that they be balanced and objective,” - he said.
The Pridnestrovian side drew the attention of EUBAM representatives that the Ministry of Economic Development of the PMR and the State Customs Committee of the PMR publish on their official websites on a regular basis the comprehensive information on the indexes of foreign economic activity of Pridnestrovie, as well as summary analytical materials which allow to trace the dynamics of the various processes in the economy. In this regard, the representatives of Pridnestrovie urged counterparts from EUBAM to take into account the official data published by the departments of the economic body of the PMR in preparing information and analytical materials of the Mission in order to avoid the spread of biased information about the Pridnestrovian economy among international partners.
EUBAM representatives were understanding of the position of Pridnestrovie and expressed their readiness to start work to eliminate the existing shortcomings in the interest of develop high-quality and objective information product.
