Moldova: Food Donation Gets Tax Breaks
Businesses that donate products nearing their expiration date or not meeting store standards will receive certain tax benefits. A legislative initiative in this sense has been registered in Parliament.
The vice-president of the parliamentary commission for environment, climate, and transition, Mariana Cușnir, specified for Radio Moldova that a law for waste prevention has been in effect since 2022. However, this law lacks measures specifically encouraging businesses to donate food products in this category. Mariana Cușnir claims that most businesses choose to write off such products as losses in order to recoup their VAT and income tax losses.
“Tax deductions for income and VAT on donated foods (even those with zero market value) could convince businesses not to wait until the last day, until the expiration on the shelf, but to make an effort to donate to a beneficiary organisation with which they previously concluded a collaboration contract. We propose this provision to give businesses the opportunity to avoid discarding food and allowing it to fully expire. Instead, as long as the product is still safe for consumption, they have an alternative.”
Mariana Cușnir also specified that the few businesses currently donating food do so out of a sense of social responsibility. One such example is the vegetable grower Vasile Cherdivară from the village of Hlinaia, Edineț district, who distributed several tons of onions to different institutions in the district and to a charity organisation.
“We donated 3.8 tons of onions. It was not bad, but we could not sell it because it had started to sprout.”
In 2023, food waste and losses in the Republic of Moldova amounted to 19.2 billion lei, of which approximately 12 billion lei was the cost of food waste. According to the expert Veaceslav Ioniță, a person throws away approximately 76 kg of food each year. At the same time, the expert also says that 5.2% of Moldovans' monthly expenses are on food.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
