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Besides health effects, COVID-19 pandemic will have significant negative social and economic consequences. The lockdown has already put tremendous strains on the Moldovan labour market, has hardly hit local businesses, and has affected vulnerable groups, including those heavily relaying on remittances.
Moldovan women will be even more affected, as they are in frontline domains that will be impacted the most from COVID-19, such as medical or educational sector or industries that had to close because of the pandemic.
It is, therefore, important to understand the extent of the effects of COVID-19 pandemic in order to prepare evidence-based measures to mitigate this impact.
In line with its integrated response offer, UNDP has mobilized catalytic funds from its corporate resources to assess the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic on most vulnerable groups of population and local businesses. With its presence on the ground on 2/3 of the territory and its partnerships with UN entities, development partners, private sector and business associations, UNDP Moldova is well positioned to conduct such an assessment using its inclusive development programming and capacities to use new types of data to build the needed evidence.
“We are particularly concerned about the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable groups of populations such as those on low-income, migrants as well as informal and small and medium businesses. The socio-economic impact assessment we will embark will provide evidence to the Government to address and recover from COVID-19 consequences,” noted Dima Al-Khatib, UNDP Resident Representative for the Republic of Moldova.
The assessment will be prepared with national and international expertise, engaging members of the Task Force on Socio-economic Impact of COVID-19, led by UNDP on behalf of the UN Country Team, and in partnership with corporate citizens and business associations. The Task Force is comprised of UN entities and development partners and coordinated, and synergetic approach will be ensured.
The conclusions and recommendations of socio-economic impact assessment will be presented to the Government and to the public for consultations and used to develop post-COVID-19 recovery measures and programmes to safeguard the progress towards achieving the nationalized SDGs so far.
