The American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine (the Chamber) welcomes a new round of bilateral negotiations on eco-tax rate regulation recently held by the Ministry for Development of Economy, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine (the Ministry) with representatives of the Government of Republic of Moldova.
Law of the Republic of Moldova #1540 on payments for environmental pollution (Law #1540) contains discriminative eco-tax regulation for importers of products in packaging. Due to it, importers are obliged to pay unreasonably high fee in comparison to local producers (e.g. importers pay per each imported PET bottle or Tetra Pak while local producers pay a settled percent of the declared value of imported packaging).
Given the upcoming increase in eco-tax to be paid starting from 2020, the Chamber addressed the Ministry with a request to initiate another round of bilateral intergovernmental negotiations with the Republic of Moldova in order to create equal and transparent regulation for all market players.
As a result of such negotiations, held in October 2019, representatives of the Republic of Moldova admitted that Law #1540 should be amended in order to abolish discriminative provisions. Moreover, there is a commitment on harmonization of the mentioned eco-tax regulation with EU standards through the adoption of respective Draft Technical Regulation which would guarantee fair, equal, and transparent eco-tax requirements both for local producers and importers.
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