How big the market is
For 2025, 446 clothing manufacturers filed financial statements, with 11,284 employees and sales revenue of 3.5 billion lei. By number of employees, clothing is the second-largest manufacturing division, after food. Textile manufacturing has 228 companies, 4,099 employees and 2.7 billion lei in sales, and leather and footwear 66 companies, 1,391 employees and 378 million lei. Of the 740 companies, 566 have fewer than ten employees.
The average gross wage in the fourth quarter of 2025 was 11,963 lei in clothing, 13,741 lei in textiles and 10,712 lei in leather and footwear. The manufacturing average for the same quarter was 14,025 lei, and the economy-wide average 16,355 lei.
What permits apply
The list of permits includes no licence for clothing, textiles, footwear or leather. No sanitary operating authorisation is required either: the activities that need one are drinking-water supply, children’s camps, schools, clinics, beauty salons and a few other services, but no factory in these divisions.
That leaves three documents that depend on what you do rather than on the field. The customs inward processing authorisation is needed when you work with the client’s material brought in from abroad. The sanitary approval from the National Agency for Public Health is needed for babywear and baby clothing accessories before they go on the market: it is free and, for series production, valid for three years. The integrated environmental permit is needed only above the capacity thresholds for dyeing and tanning.
Labels are checked by the State Inspectorate for the Surveillance of Non-Food Products and Consumer Protection. The declared composition is compared with an accredited laboratory’s analysis, and a non-compliant product can be banned or withdrawn from the market.
Lohn: the inward processing procedure
In lohn, the client sends the fabric, trims or cut pieces, the factory sews or assembles them, and the finished product goes back. The Customs Code calls this inward processing: foreign goods are used in Moldova without customs duty or other import charges. Goods placed under the procedure are also exempt from import VAT, except for a few foods, such as some types of meat, milk and sugar, which do not concern this field.
The procedure requires an authorisation from the Customs Service. It is granted only to a person established in the customs territory that ensures operations run properly, shows how it uses the goods and allows customs supervision and checks. Goods placed under the procedure must be identifiable in the processed products. The Customs Service sets the period within which the procedure must be discharged and can extend it on request. Machinery and tools cannot be placed under inward processing as production accessories. Equipment a foreign client makes available to the factory is placed under temporary admission.
Until 31 December 2026, the inward processing authorisation is issued and the procedure runs without a guarantee, and the foreign client’s equipment under temporary admission needs no guarantee either. From 1 January 2027 the general rule applies: a guarantee is lodged where a customs debt may arise, and the authorisation holder may ask for it to be waived or reduced.
Lohn does not change the CAEM code. As a rule, the classification puts a factory working under contract in the same class as one producing on its own account, so a sewing workshop in lohn registers under 14.13 like any other. A company that hands all its production to someone else without owning the raw material is classified as trade.
Subcontractors and VAT
A company holding an inward processing authorisation can pass part of an order to other factories in Moldova. For them to invoice the sewing without VAT, they must be on the List of Economic Agents – Light Industry Enterprises, approved by order of the Ministry of Economic Development and Digitalisation. Services on the list are exempt from VAT with the right to deduct, so the subcontractor deducts the VAT it pays on thread, energy or rent.
The list covers the production of garments, knitwear, leather goods and footwear, and it is updated often: in 2026, up to 1 October, the ministry amended it 11 times. The application comes with the company’s registration document, a Chamber of Commerce and Industry document confirming its production capacity and the contracts with the procedure holder, and the ministry examines it within 7 days. For every order, the subcontractor keeps the contract, the tax invoice, the documents for receiving the raw material and returning the products, the certificate of work performed and proof of payment.
Labelling clothing and textiles
A textile product may be sold only if it is labelled, marked or accompanied by commercial documents that state its composition. The label gives the name and percentage by weight of every fibre, in descending order, using only the names on the official list. Fibres that account for up to 5% of the weight each, or up to 15% together, may appear as “other fibres” with their percentage. “100%”, “pure” or “all” may only appear on a product made of a single fibre, with a 2% tolerance for foreign fibres that cannot technically be avoided.
A product made of several components with different compositions gives the composition of each, except for components that are not the main lining and make up less than 30% of the weight. Fur or leather in a textile product is flagged with the words “Contains non-textile parts of animal origin”. The label must be durable, legible and firmly attached, and for consumers it is in Romanian. When the product is sold online, the composition must be visible before purchase.
The manufacturer answers for the label, or the importer if the manufacturer is not based in Moldova. A distributor that sells under its own brand or changes the label becomes the manufacturer. The rules do not apply to products entrusted to a factory that processes the material it receives without becoming its owner — in other words, lohn work — or to made-to-measure clothes from self-employed tailors.
A footwear label describes three parts: the upper, the lining and sock, and the outer sole. For each, it names the material that makes up at least 80% of the surface of the upper and lining, or of the volume of the sole. If no material reaches 80%, the two main ones are given. The composition is shown by pictograms or in writing, at least in Romanian, on at least one shoe of the pair, by printing, gluing, embossing or an attached label.
The manufacturer, or its authorised representative based in Moldova, answers for the accuracy of the label. If neither is based here, the importer answers for it, and the shop is responsible for making sure the shoes on its shelves are labelled. Second-hand footwear, protective footwear, which follows the rules for personal protective equipment, and toy footwear are not labelled under these rules.
Dyeworks and tanneries
The industrial emissions law puts two operations from this field on its list of activities with a significant environmental risk. The first is pretreatment, meaning washing, bleaching or mercerising, and dyeing of fibres and textiles with a capacity above 10 tonnes a day. The second is tanning of hides and furs above 12 tonnes of finished products a day. Above these thresholds, a plant may operate only with an integrated environmental permit from the Environment Agency, which costs 30,000 lei and is issued for 12 years. The list of low-risk activities contains no class from divisions 13, 14 or 15.
For a factory, the usual form is an SRL, which pays 12% income tax and whose liability is limited to the company’s own assets. The inward processing authorisation is granted only to a company established in Moldova, so a foreign client who wants their collections sewn here works either with a local factory or through its own Moldovan company.
We handle the choice of CAEM codes, the articles of association, the filing with the Public Services Agency and the opening of the bank account. We prepare the applications for the inward processing authorisation and for inclusion in the light-industry list, and the export paperwork, and for a foreign company we register a Moldovan company or a free economic zone resident. We can take over the accounting, including records of the material received in lohn, from the first month. What each service includes is on the corporate services page.
