The “National Entrepreneurship Tour” stopped in Ungheni this week, for the second time this year: a regional session organized by the Alliance of Small and Medium Enterprises (AIM) together with the Ministry of Economic Development and Digitalization and the Organization for Entrepreneurship Development (ODA). There were speeches about opportunity, a dialogue between business and the authorities, officials on the dais — district president Dionisie Ternovschi, MP Andrian Cheptonar, an Ungheni native, and Ion Poia, head of the State Chancellery’s Ungheni Territorial Office.
Beyond the event, though, the question that counts for an Ungheni resident with a business is more down-to-earth: of the hundreds of millions the state hands out to entrepreneurs, how much actually reaches the district? You don’t have to ask anyone — it’s in the open data.
The figure: nine firms, 3.8 million lei
The government’s open-data portal publishes ODA grants broken down by district. For the Ungheni district, the most recent complete picture is 2024: that year, nine firms from the district drew ODA grants worth a total of 3,812,618 lei — three firms in the first half of the year (nearly 2.5 million lei) and six more in the second (1.34 million).
Set against its neighbours, the figure looks good. In the same table, Nisporeni district had five recipients (1.64 million lei), Călărași also five (1.21 million), and Fălești just one (350,000). In other words, among the districts in the area, Ungheni was among those that drew down this money best. A necessary caveat: the official per-district breakdown stops, for now, at 2024; the 2025 and 2026 figures are not yet published at this level.
Where the money comes from, and what you can ask for in 2026
ODA is the tool through which the state finances small business — directly, through grants, or indirectly, through credit guarantees. Nationally, in 2025 the organization approved around 810 projects worth 346.4 million lei; for 2026, the programmes hold some 300 million.
For anyone now thinking of a business, two programmes are open. “Grow SME” offers a launch grant of up to 600,000 lei, with support covering 60% of the investment — plus a 10% bonus for young people, women, people who have returned from abroad, and applicants from outside Chișinău, Ungheni included. For businesses already running there is a development component of up to 5 million. “Programme 373”, by contrast, does not hand out money but raises the state guarantee on a loan to 80%, for loans up to 40 million lei. Both, though, ask something of the entrepreneur: an own contribution of at least 30% — the barrier where a person with a good idea and a thin wallet usually stops.
The backdrop the money lands on
This support does not fall on a booming economy but on one that, in 2024, shrank on both fronts. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, firms in the Ungheni district had about 8,033 employees in 2024 — some 700 fewer than in 2021, the peak. And turnover, after climbing to 8.35 billion lei in 2023, fell back to 7.93 billion in 2024. That is, in the same year, the district lost both jobs and money turned over. On top of which, the district’s average wage stays about a fifth below the national average.
In that picture, every firm that catches a grant and every job kept weigh more than the bare figure would suggest.
The money and the training — two halves of the same road
Grants are only part of the equation. The other — how to keep a firm afloat — is the subject of another programme reaching Ungheni next month: three days of free training for beginner entrepreneurs, on 14–16 July, funded by European money. One teaches a person how to run the business; the other gives them what to start it with. The Ungheni tour was, in the end, about the link between them.
The number of firms and the amount of ODA grants for the Ungheni district (9 firms, 3,812,618 lei, 2024) and the comparison with neighbouring districts come from the “ODA Grants” dataset published on the government’s open-data portal; it is the most recent official per-district breakdown. The active programmes and their amounts come from the Organization for Entrepreneurship Development; the national ODA figures from the organization’s and the Ministry of Economic Development’s communications. The data on employees and turnover by district belong to the National Bureau of Statistics. Details of the regional session of the “National Entrepreneurship Tour” come from AIM’s communication. For this article, Triunghi.md did not obtain the voice of an Ungheni entrepreneur who received a grant.