On 24 June the government approved the National Tourism Development Programme «Turism 2029» — a 618.2-million-lei plan that promises to turn tourism into an «engine of economic growth» and to create about 5,000 jobs by 2029. The figures sound good. But for an Ungheni resident who runs a guesthouse on the edge of town, or for a village with an old church and not a single room to rent, the question is not how much is announced in Chișinău, but whether anything reaches here too — and through which door.
What «Turism 2029» is
The programme treats tourism as a strategic economic sector and aims to attract more visitors, bring revenue to businesses and communities, and create jobs across the country. It will run through a 2026–2029 Action Plan, with measures along four lines: developing and modernising tourism infrastructure, training specialists, promoting the offer through digital solutions, and supporting rural tourism alongside the valorisation of cultural, natural and wine heritage. Coordination falls to the Ministry of Culture.
Two clarifications are essential to read the 618-million figure correctly. First: the money is, for the most part, not from the national budget. According to the draft version submitted for public consultation, of the total cost — estimated there at about 564 million lei — roughly 437.5 million, or around 77%, is to come from the European Union, through projects under the 2025–2027 Growth Plan. Second: the programme does not divide the money by district. The sums are distributed across national objectives and budget sub-programmes, not across a map of the country — so no district, Ungheni included, has a slice written in its name in advance.
A third plan, after two that were never seen through
«Turism 2029» does not start from scratch — nor with an especially encouraging record. It is the third national tourism-policy document in two decades. Before it came the 2003–2015 sustainable tourism development strategy and «Turism 2020» (approved in 2014). Of these, the programme document itself admits they «did not reach their conclusion»: «Turism 2020» was carried out only in the first of three planned stages, the one for 2014–2016, after which responsibilities scattered among several institutions and planning entered, in the same document’s words, a «vacuum».
That diagnosis is confirmed from outside the government as well. A monitoring report by the ALDA organisation found that tourism funding had for years been «dispersed among multiple entities and is not coordinated centrally», at a share of just 0.08–0.15% of the public budget — a sign the sector was not a priority. And the National Tourism Office, created precisely to bring order, «is not currently fully operational», with a 2025–2026 budget estimated at about 65% less than in 2023. In other words, the ambition is large, but the levers are weakened too.
Figures that sound good, read more closely
The statement boasts that in 2025 the sector drew «over 600,000 visitors» and «revenue of more than 5 billion lei». The numbers are real, but they say something other than they seem at first glance. Those roughly 604,000 people are the tourists and excursionists served by travel agencies — and two thirds of them (66.5%) are Moldovans who went on holiday abroad, not foreigners who came to us. Only 15% means inbound tourism, that is, foreign visitors.
It is the same with the money. Of the 5.1 billion lei collected by agencies, almost 4.8 billion comes from outbound tourism — money spent by Moldovans on stays in Turkey, Bulgaria or Egypt, money that leaves the country’s economy. From the foreign tourists who come to Moldova, by contrast, only 86.9 million lei came in. Overall, the Moldovans who leave outspend, by about 55 times, the foreigners who come. That is the real problem a tourism programme ought to solve, not a success to report.
In Ungheni: a 3-million centre, but fewer and fewer beds
This is where the district comes in. Ungheni has already invested in the «shell» of tourism: it has a Tourist Information Centre built in 2023 for almost 3 million lei from European funds, an urban trail of 17 sites, and promotional activities. It also has «goods» to show: Cornova, the village that sociologist Dimitrie Gusti’s team studied in 1931 and made famous in textbooks, the bank of the Prut, and festivals with local flavour, from the Ungheni Sânziene to the Folk Costume Festival at Mănoilești.
What it lacks is the infrastructure that keeps a tourist overnight. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the Ungheni district had just 142 rooms and 342 bed-places in accommodation structures in 2025 — about a third of the nearly 1,000 bed-places recorded in 2008. How many tourists actually pass through the district cannot be said from public data: official statistics count beds, not people, at district level. For a programme that promises «rural tourism» and «valorisation of heritage», this is exactly the gap it could fill — and exactly where you can see how low the district starts.
Through which doors the money might enter
If «Turism 2029» does not send a sum with the district’s address on it, that does not mean Ungheni is left out. There are several channels through which a rural district can get money, if it has projects ready and people to write them.
The first, and most concrete, are the tourism grants of the Organisation for Entrepreneurship Development (ODA): up to 500,000 lei per recipient, with non-repayable funding of up to 70%, intended precisely for small localities of fewer than 30,000 inhabitants. The communes of the Ungheni district qualify directly; the town of Ungheni sits right at the threshold. The second is the programme’s European component itself — those roughly 437 million lei come through thematic calls that applicants bid for. The third, for the wine side, would be the «Wine Road of Moldova», the national wine-tourism route; Ungheni belongs geographically to the Codru wine region, but the newsroom has not yet found a single winery from the district officially included on the route.
Where Ungheni’s share is actually decided
The decision is not made at the government’s press conference, but in the offices where projects are written. «Turism 2029» puts mostly European money on the table, but with no slice reserved for districts; whoever wants a share has to apply — for ODA grants, for European calls, for thematic routes. Ungheni enters this competition with a three-million-lei tourist centre, a handful of heritage sites and a hard accommodation problem — 342 bed-places, a third of the level of fifteen years ago. That is all the district has to offer, and all it has to fix.
The data on the «Turism 2029» programme, the 618.2-million-lei budget and the estimate of 5,000 jobs come from the government’s official statement of 24 June 2026. The funding structure (about 77% European sources) and the acknowledgement that previous strategies «did not reach their conclusion» come from the draft version submitted for public consultation; the final figure and breakdown are to be confirmed against the decision published in the Official Gazette. The figures on visitors and revenue for 2025 come from the National Bureau of Statistics, which breaks them down into outbound, domestic and inbound tourism. The Ungheni district’s accommodation capacity (142 rooms, 342 bed-places in 2025, versus 996 bed-places in 2008) comes from the Bureau’s table TUR010200reg.px. The conditions of the tourism grants come from the Organisation for Entrepreneurship Development. Triunghi.md had not obtained, by the time of publication, a reaction from the Ministry of Culture or the National Tourism Office on how districts can access these funds.