How big the market is
For 2025, 2,981 companies in division 45 filed financial statements, with 13,557 employees and sales revenue of 26,041 million lei. Of these, 2,708 have fewer than ten employees: most automotive businesses are micro-enterprises.
The average gross salary in the motor trade and vehicle repair was 14,034.8 lei in the fourth quarter of 2025, below the economy-wide average of 16,355.1 lei. Headcount rose by 12.3% on the same quarter of 2024 and kept growing in 2026: by 7.4% in the first quarter and 6.4% in the second. In each of these quarters, division 45 took on staff faster than wholesale and retail trade.
What permits you need
No activity in division 45 is licensed, and none is on the list of activities that need an environmental permit or a sanitary authorisation. They all start with the trade notification: the whole division is on the list of trading activities. You file it with the town hall of the locality where the unit is, not where the company is registered, and you file one for each unit. A showroom is notified as a specialised shop, while repair businesses have their own types: technical assistance centre, service station, workshop or tyre repair unit, depending on floor area and services.
The workshop has a second registration, with the National Road Transport Agency. Periodic technical inspection is not part of car repair: it has a different CAEM code, 71.20, and a separate authorisation for each station, described on the architecture, engineering and design page.
Car repair: registering with ANTA
The Road Transport Code treats vehicle servicing as an activity related to transport. It may be carried out only in specialised workshops entered in advance in the Register of Related Activities. Registration starts with a notification, filed through e-Autorizație transport, giving the workshop’s address, its activities and the name of the manager in charge. The Agency enters you within 15 working days; if it carries out no inspection and issues no report within that time, tacit approval applies. You must notify any later change within 15 days.
A new regulation on vehicle servicing has applied since 12 June 2026. It lists the activities, from mechanical and electrical repairs to bodywork, windscreens, tyre repair and wheel balancing, fitting alarms and GPS systems, and changing oil and filters. Its annex sets the minimum equipment for each activity: an inspection pit or a lift where work is done under the vehicle, a tyre changer and a wheel balancer for tyre work, a body straightening bench for bodywork, and diagnostic equipment. The equipment may also be rented. Workshops registered before the regulation have until 12 June 2027 to equip themselves.
The regulation also sets duties towards the customer. The workshop displays consumer rights and obligations and its extract from the register, fills in the service book if the customer presents it, and the work order sets out the jobs, the deadlines and the cost of parts, labour and materials. On safety systems, the workshop fits only type-approved or certified parts.
Dismantling, vehicle modification and LPG systems
Two vehicle servicing activities have a stricter regime. Dismantling end-of-life vehicles and vehicle modification, meaning any work that changes the vehicle’s parameters from the approved type, including tuning and fitting LPG or CNG systems, are not registered by notification alone. For each workshop you file a full application: the manager’s certificate of professional competence, a declaration of good repute, the equipment list, the metrological verification certificates and a 1:100 plan of the workshop.
The manager of such a workshop must be an engineer or technician in road transport, with at least two years in car repair, and their certificate of professional competence is valid for five years. If the modification changes the vehicle’s category, the company also needs an ISO 9000-series quality certificate. The modified car’s papers are reissued on presentation of the modification permit from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and proof that the work was done in an authorised workshop.
Dismantling also requires separate areas for handover and storage, impermeable surfaces and separate containers for fuel, oils, fluids and batteries. The dismantler issues a certificate of destruction in the owner’s name and notifies the register within 10 days so that the vehicle is deregistered. An operator that treats end-of-life vehicles also needs an environmental permit, described on the waste and recycling page.
Tachographs and speed limiters
Tachographs and speed limiters may be installed, repaired and checked only in workshops registered for this with the National Road Transport Agency. Registration is free and does not expire, but the application requires certificates of professional competence for the manager and the experts, obtained after a training course, metrological verification certificates, and a plan of the workshop and the test track. Fitted tachographs are checked every two years, so transport companies come back regularly. The duty for lorries and coaches to carry a tachograph is described on the road freight and passenger transport page.
Car washes and tyre repair
A car wash has the same code as car repair, 45.20, but does not register with ANTA: washing is not a vehicle servicing activity. In the trade notification, a car wash is declared bay by bay, and so is a mobile waterless car wash. Tyre repair, by contrast, is vehicle servicing: repairing, fitting and balancing tyres is allowed only after entry in the register.
Selling cars: registration and test-drive plates
Vehicles are registered with the Public Services Agency, in the owner’s name, after the Agency’s expert has identified them. Importers who sell cars benefit from an important exception. An imported vehicle is normally registered in the name of the person the customs documents were issued to, but the rule does not apply to companies whose line of business is selling vehicles: the buyer registers the car directly in their own name. A vehicle that has not been placed under a customs procedure cannot be registered.
For test drives requested by customers, a company that sells vehicles and has premises fitted out to display them receives a temporary registration certificate for testing. It is valid for one year, in Moldova only, and before each test drive you enter the vehicle and the driver in a register kept at the registered office. Test-drive plates may not be used to carry goods or passengers commercially.
From 23 January 2027, registration is suspended automatically when the periodic technical inspection expires or when major defects are found. A car with major defects may still be driven for 30 days, solely to have it repaired.
VAT, excise duty and road tax
Cars are on the list of supplies exempt from VAT without the right to deduct. Lorries, motorcycles, trailers, parts and repairs are not on the list and carry 20% VAT.
Excise duty is paid on import. The rate is set in lei per cubic centimetre and depends on the fuel, the engine capacity and the car’s age: the older the car, the higher the rate. Cars with a customs value of 600,000 lei or more pay additional excise of 2% to 10% of the customs value. Plug-in hybrids have the rate cut by 50% and other hybrids by 25%. The 25% cut does not apply to micro hybrids and mild hybrids.
Cars on test-drive plates pay road tax: 25% of the annual rate, for 90 days from payment. Compulsory third-party motor insurance (RCA) for them may be taken out for less than a year, but for no less than 30 days.
Parts, tyres, oils and batteries
A company that places tyres, oils or batteries on the market for the first time is a producer under extended producer responsibility. It registers on the Environment Agency’s List of Producers and pays for collecting and treating them once they become waste, on its own or through a collective scheme. An importer of cars and light vans is a producer for the vehicles, and both it and a motorcycle importer are producers for the batteries in them. Anyone buying cars for resale must ask the producers for their number on the list.
A distributor may sell only tyres from producers on the list. The collection network for used tyres is made up of technical service centres, car retail centres and car parks, and places where oil is changed have special containers for used oil. A repair shop may hand replaced parts and materials that have become waste only to authorised operators.
Used parts may be sold, with one limit: the law bans selling parts for reuse where they would breach road safety requirements. An importer of vehicle accessories and equipment must have these products assessed for conformity with safety and environmental requirements. Like any importer, it puts its name and address on the product and supplies the safety information in Romanian.
Motorcycles
Motorcycles and mopeds have a single code, 45.40, for sales, parts and repairs. On import, excise duty is zero for motorcycles up to ten years old; from 11 years old, the rate rises with every year. Motorcycles are sold with 20% VAT, because they are not on the exemption list. The end-of-life vehicle rules cover only cars and light vans, not motorcycles, but the importer is liable as a producer for the batteries in them.
Car rental
Renting out cars without a driver is not part of division 45: it has code 77.11, and lorries 77.12. It needs no licence and no authorisation from the National Road Transport Agency, and the Road Transport Code lists it neither among transport activities nor among related ones. You file a trade notification for the rental unit, and the cars are registered in the company’s name; where a car is let under a lease contract, registration certificates marked “locațiune” (lease) may be issued. Renting with a driver is transport and has a different code, 49.39, described on the road freight and passenger transport page. From 2027, codes 77.11 and 77.12 stay, and car rental brokerage gets its own code, 77.51.
What changes in 2027
From 1 January 2027 the CAEM Rev. 2.1 classification applies, and division 45 no longer exists in it. Sales are split by buyer: at wholesale, vehicles move to 46.71, parts to 46.72 and motorcycles to 46.73; at retail, to 47.81, 47.82 and 47.83. The 3.5-tonne threshold disappears, so cars and lorries share the same code. Repair and maintenance move to another section, to 95.31 for motor vehicles and 95.32 for motorcycles. Codes 45.11, 45.20 and 45.32 will cease to exist.
How much it costs to open an automotive business
The paperwork is cheap. The trade notification is 100 lei for each unit, and an SRL is registered with no minimum share capital. A repair shop adds the minimum equipment the regulation requires, and for vehicle modification and tachographs, metrologically verified measuring instruments.
The cost to budget for every year is the local tax on commercial units. Showrooms, repair shops, car washes and rental points are all types of commercial unit, so they pay it, and the local council sets it by type of unit and floor area. In Chișinău, a showroom is listed in the same tariff row as shops, and the tax rises in floor-area bands, so a large showroom pays much more than a small one. Read the council’s decision before signing the lease.
An SRL is the usual form for an automotive business. Only the company’s assets are at risk, not your personal ones, and you can open a second workshop or showroom without changing anything. Below the threshold of 1.7 million lei in sales over 12 months, a company that is not a VAT payer may apply the 4% tax on income. Above it you become a VAT payer and move to the general regime.
A sole trader has no access to the 4% regime, because the law expressly excludes it, and the owner is personally liable for its obligations with everything they own.
We choose the CAEM codes, draw up the articles of association, file the application with the Public Services Agency and open the bank account. On your behalf, we file the trade notification with the town hall, the workshop’s notification or full application with the National Road Transport Agency, and the registration on the Environment Agency’s List of Producers. For a foreign manufacturer or importer that wants to sell cars or parts in Moldova, we register the SRL or the branch. We can take on the accounting from the first month, including VAT, excise duty and the local tax. What each service includes is set out on the corporate services page.
