317. The Moldovan delegation would like to join the proposal and the Communication JOB/IP/21 regarding the Work Programme on Electronic Commerce, co-sponsored by Canada, Chile, Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire, the European Union, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Montenegro, Paraguay, Singapore and Turkey. The Republic of Moldova further looks forward to explore in more detail the proposals presented by the Brazilian delegation, Argentina and Paraguay in JOB/IP/19 and JOB/IP/20, and also by the delegation of Singapore on behalf of co-sponsors of document JOB/IP/22. The Republic of Moldova shares the view of the communication presented by the European Union on behalf of all co-sponsors of document JOB/IP/21, as well as of the majority of Members considering that electronic commerce is essential in our digital era of human development. E-commerce and investment are the main priorities for the Moldovan Government, and we do believe that the WTO has a role to play to help leverage the digital economy for inclusive economic growth and encourage closer economic integration among participating Members.
318. In the case of the Republic of Moldova, the current developments in this field, as well as the creation of e-government centre with the assistance and support the certain Member states of the European Union, especially Estonia, helped us to achieve a much more open government and data of public interest by means of capitalisation of the value of information and technologies and advanced competitiveness policy. All these actions have led to the improvement of trading services, the national agenda being focused on the line of ensuring digitalisations of all public services until 2020. Efforts of the Moldovan authorities will be continuing as well in the direction of capitalising the opportunities with a view to create market stake holders platform approach to internet governance processes by ensuring the meaningful and accountable participation of all stakeholders, including governments, the private sector, SMEs, civil society, the technical community, the academic community and users, taking into consideration the Trade Facilitation Agreement provisions.
319. Many Eastern European countries are known for their IT specialists. In this sense, I am pleased to note that Moldova has the sixth fastest Internet speed in the world by download data capacity. Regarding the proposal made in the Communication JOB/IP/21, by the European Union and the Members co-sponsoring this Communication, we would like to answer certain questions raised by the authors of this Communication and to offer some additional ideas and elements for the trade policy and guidelines for an interactive debate under electronic services in the WTO committees. We look forward and we would like to engage in a constructive and technical discussion under electronic services supply for businesses, as solutions for e-commerce buyers in general and particularly in the framework of the implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement. A list of electronic services should be included into this communication, in order to share national expertise and the regulation regarding electronic services. In this context, I would like to underline the importance of certain e-commerce services such as e-invoice services, single window system, state register of inspection which can offer a common online platform allowing authorised control bodies to automatize the process of planning controls and the registering of planned and unplanned checks as well as publishing them on a public portal. The public procurement reporting services offer the possibility for the economic agents to present and report to the online portal. The licensing services provide the full range of specialised functions to optimise submission and review of licence applications from the licensing chamber.
320. The electronic fiscal record service can strengthen the fiscal capacity. It is an electronic statement which offers an automated method for completing and submitting fiscal reports, including the latest barcode coding technology. Many more electronic services should be taken into consideration for a technical discussion if we really want to have it in the WTO Committees and Councils. All these objectives mentioned in the communications regarding the open markets require frameworks and enhanced transparency of the multilateral trading system, especially to identify measures and initiatives to be taken in order to facilitate the development of e-commerce. All of them are first of all about services. Since we are talking about electronic services we should have an interactive debate at the E-commerce Committee of the Council for Trade and Services and of course the TRIPS Council as well.
321. The Republic of Moldova strongly believes that our efforts in the WTO negotiations can produce a common result in the area of trade in services, e-commerce and competition of trade policies in the digital economy which will be stipulated in the next WTO Ministerial Declaration. E-commerce will always remain the fundamental pillar of services trade policies. Moldova looks forward to having an interactive debate and is ready to deliver concrete results for MC11.
