The Government announced on Tuesday, 4 August, that it is placing at the disposal of merging mayoralties an incentive package of 6.5 billion lei and named a figure per head: “the development incentive, worth 3,000 lei for every resident of the new administrative-territorial unit”. The press release gives as examples the groups in Rîșcani, Strășeni and Fălești. Ungheni district has six amalgamation groups, which take in 30 of its 33 mayoralties.
Applied to the district, the formulas of the Methodology yield 276.7 million lei for the six groups — all three incentives together. The largest share goes to the group around Ungheni municipality: 157.5 million.
| Group | Mayoralties | Residents (1 Jan. 2024) | Total package |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ungheni municipality | 10 | 42,316 | 157.5 million lei |
| Sculeni | 4 | 7,430 | 32.5 million lei |
| Pîrlița | 5 | 6,882 | 31.6 million lei |
| Boghenii Noi | 7 | 4,978 | 23.3 million lei |
| Cornești | 3 | 4,172 | 17.1 million lei |
| Bușila–Chirileni–Negurenii Vechi | 3 | 3,566 | 14.6 million lei |
| Total | 276.7 million lei |
The table comes with a reservation. In two of the groups, one council each had not yet voted approval as of 5 August: Sinești, in the Boghenii Noi group, has only the initiation decision of 6 April, while Cioropcani, in the Sculeni group, has the initiation of 21 May and the order organising public consultations, with the vote announced for 7 August. If either is left out, its group loses both population and a step of the multiplier: Boghenii Noi would drop by 4.09 million lei, and Sculeni by 7.60 million.
The figure of 278 million checks out
On 31 July, in a post on the page of Cioropcani Commune Town Hall, Ion Poia, head of the Ungheni Territorial Office of the State Chancellery, wrote that “278 million lei will go to the mayoralties in Ungheni district that have finished the voluntary amalgamation process”. At the time it was not apparent where the sum came from: the only money appearing in the councils’ decisions were the preparation transfers, of a few hundred thousand lei each.
The formulas of the Methodology explain it, and the figure put on the table on 4 August gives the benchmark to check against. The calculation across the six groups yields 276,687,062 lei — a difference of 0.47% from the announced figure, that is, at the level of rounding. A nuance of timing: on 31 July, the sixth group, Bușila–Chirileni–Negurenii Vechi, did not yet have its approval decision published in the State Register of Local Acts. It fell into line immediately afterwards — the three councils voted the merger on 29 and 30 July, and the decisions appeared in the register on 3 and 4 August, with Bușila Town Hall as the administrative centre.
“3,000 lei per resident” is only the first term
The real formula, in point 114 of the Methodology approved by Government Decision no. 925/2023, has two parts: the population multiplied by 3,000 lei, plus a second term that grows with the number of mayoralties in the group. The multiplier is twice the number of mayoralties minus two, capped at 12 — so a group of seven mayoralties or more takes the maximum. For groups whose centre has more than 10,000 residents, the second term is calculated on the population outside the centre.
The coefficient of 3,000 lei is recent: until Government Decision no. 269 of 27 May 2026, it was 1,000. The act triples it: “in the formulas in point 114, the figures «1000», in both cases, are replaced with the figures «3000»”.
The difference is not theoretical. The three examples given by the Government — Rîșcani 72.7 million, Strășeni 68.7 and Fălești 64.9 — are not the development incentive, although the press release places them in the paragraph about it. They are the full package, with all three incentives. And the development component on its own goes well beyond “3,000 lei per resident”: at Rîșcani, where the group has seven mayoralties and 14,812 residents, 3,000 lei a head would give 44.4 million, whereas the formula gives 66.1 million — 49% more. The Government’s figures are correct; the label put on them is not.
The consequence for Ungheni: whoever applies the formula in the press release literally obtains sums smaller than the real ones. The effective rate of the development incentive in the district is 3,555 lei per resident.
Three incentives, three timetables
The package has three components, all in the same Methodology.
Preparation — between 400,000 and 1,000,000 lei, in population bands, paid on request. Five of the district’s groups fall into the 400,000 band; the municipal group, in which one unit passes 10,000 residents, into 600,000 — exactly the sum that the mayor, Vitalie Vrabie, stated in July that he had requested. The one-million-lei ceiling in the press release does not reach the district: it exists only for processes in which every participating mayoralty has fewer than 10,000 residents and their combined population exceeds 50,000.
Infrastructure development — the heavy part, the one with the formula above. It can be spent on capital investment, capital repairs, equipment and means of transport.
Support for local budgets — 250 or 300 lei per resident a year, capped at 2 million lei annually, for three years, from 2028. The groups around the municipality, at Sculeni and at Pîrlița, reach the ceiling.
The condition that does not appear in the announcement
“The money is available”, Alexei Buzu said. The acts add a condition that is not in the press release. Decision no. 269 of May provides, for the mergers completed before the general local elections of 2027 — hence for all those in Ungheni district — that the transfers for infrastructure development “will be allocated after the publication of the law amending Law no. 764/2001 on administrative-territorial organisation”, the act by which the new units come into legal existence. On 5 August, that law had not been published. The State Chancellery’s explanatory note estimates it for October 2026.
It is a derogation, not the general rule. Normally, point 113 of the Methodology ties the money to “the confirmation of the results of the new local elections” in the amalgamated unit — but the same provisions of May establish that the new units vote only at the general elections of 2027, so the usual trigger cannot occur any earlier.
The population on which the calculation is made depends on that same date: point 92¹ of the Methodology, in its May version, provides that “the most recent official data on the population, supplied by the National Bureau of Statistics”, available on the date that law is published, are used. The 2026 series has been published since 9 July — even if the Bureau marks it as preliminary — so it will be the most recent one at that moment, unless another appears in the meantime. On it, the municipal group loses 1,128 residents against 2024 and about 4.8 million lei, and the district total falls from 276.7 to 267.1 million — by 9.59 million, that is 3.5% less.
A second mismatch concerns procedure. Point 113 says that the transfers for development “are allocated ex officio by the State Chancellery”. The press release of 4 August describes something else: projects selected “according to the degree of readiness, the number of beneficiaries, the impact and the mayoralty’s capacity to maintain the investment”, implemented under contract with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Regional Development or through the regional development agencies. The chapter of the Methodology governing the Fund contains no such selection procedure.
The 6.5 billion is an estimate, not money voted
The sum comes from an explanatory note signed by Alexei Buzu, which breaks it down as follows: 107.8 million for preparation, in 2026; 5.36 billion for development, in 2027–2028; 1.02 billion for budget support, in 2028–2030. The note states its premise: the calculations start “from the presumption that most mayoralties will take part in the voluntary amalgamation process”.
In law, for the time being, there is something else. The 2026 state budget law allocates 173.7 million lei to the Fund for the Voluntary Amalgamation of Localities. The rest depends on the budgets for 2027–2030, which have not been adopted.
The note does not show whether the 5.36 billion for the development incentive was calculated with the full formula or only with its first term — a difference of the order of billions at the scale of the country.
The other side
Not all the district’s mayoralties entered the scheme. Petrești Commune Council rejected, with reasons, the initiation of amalgamation on 27 May, after the commune’s general assembly. The decision invokes a population of 3,185 residents “according to the 2024 census”, while the series on which the transfers are calculated — the population with usual residence as of 1 January 2024 — gives it 3,134. Both figures clear the threshold of 3,000 residents that the State Chancellery describes as proposed for first-tier mayoralties — so, on today’s figures, the commune does not fall below it. It is money it said no to.
The Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova, the mayors’ association, did not give an opinion on May’s draft decision — a fact recorded by the State Chancellery itself in the explanatory note: “The Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova did not submit its opinion within the established deadline”.
The closest precedent to the Moldovan mechanism is the Estonian reform of 2017: there too the state paid a per-head grant for voluntary mergers, and where no agreement was reached, the government was given the right to initiate the merger itself. The number of municipalities fell from 213 to 79.
The safety net differs, however. Estonia legislated that, for eight years, state grants do not fall as a result of a merger, and the difference is compensated — for all transfers. The Moldovan Methodology has a compensation too, but a narrow one: point 122 provides that, when a municipality or a district-seat town merges with villages and communes, the transfer supporting budgets is topped up with the estimated losses from the shares of personal income tax. It applies to the group around Ungheni municipality, but not to the other five, and the transfer it tops up is granted for only three years.
The sums per group are calculated by the newsroom with the formulas in points 94, 114 and 121 of the Methodology approved by Government Decision no. 925/2023, as amended by Government Decision no. 269 of 27 May 2026, and with the population with usual residence published by the National Bureau of Statistics (the table by locality POP010500rclreg.px). The formula in point 114 appears as an image on the legislative portal, but it is printed in the text of the Official Gazette no. 472-473 of 8 December 2023, article 1155, from where it was read: (Total Pop × 500) + {Total Pop^1.5 × M} for groups whose centre has fewer than 10,000 residents, and (Total Pop × 500) + {Periferic Pop^1.5 × M} for those whose centre has 10,000 residents or more. The coefficient rose from 500 to 1,000 through Government Decision no. 797 of 27 November 2024 and from 1,000 to 3,000 through the one of May 2026, each act naming the figure it replaces. The Government’s official simulator, amalgamator.gov.md, gives the same results, as a cross-check. The composition of the groups is that recorded in the State Register of Local Acts on 5 August 2026.