How to open a construction company in Moldova: finishing and installation work, buildings, roads and networks, property development

How big the market is

For 2025, 4,783 construction companies filed financial statements, with 33,168 employees and sales revenue of 38.4 billion lei. A year earlier there were 4,229, so more than 550 new companies joined the figures in 2025. The largest group, 2,600, are specialised contractors — installations, finishing, demolition, foundations — followed by 1,477 companies that put up buildings and 706 that build roads and networks.

The value of construction work carried out in 2025 was 26 billion lei, and the volume rose by 29.4% on the previous year. The largest share, 42%, was civil engineering — roads, networks, pipelines — followed by non-residential buildings, at almost 30%, and residential ones, at 25%. Foreign-owned companies carried out 1.9 billion lei of work.

On the demand side, 2,955 building permits for new buildings were issued in 2025, more than 2,000 of them for individual houses. Every house needs someone to pour the foundations, build the walls, run the installations and do the finishing.

The licence is gone, the register remains

Until 2017, construction was licensed. Today the Urban Planning and Construction Code puts it differently: construction work may be carried out by legal persons entered in the State Register in the field of construction that have certified site managers who are construction engineers. You do not apply to join the register; you notify.

You file the notification with the National Inspectorate for Technical Supervision at least 10 working days before work starts on your first site. You declare how many people are in your teams and on what kinds of work, who your site managers are and in which fields they are certified, who runs the company and who keeps its archive, what premises, machinery, vehicles, workshops and depots you have, and that you work to company standards and method statements. The inspectorate may not ask you for anything else and must register you as soon as the 10 days are up. If it does not reply, the notification is deemed valid.

So the order is: register the company with the Public Services Agency, hire the site manager, notify the inspectorate, wait ten working days, go on site. Once, not for every project.

The site manager is what makes the company

Without a certified site manager, a construction company exists only on paper. This is the employee who takes over the site from the investor, checks that there is a building permit, draws up the quality control plan, directs the work and answers for it until the end of the warranty. For installations carried out under subcontract, quality is ensured by the subcontractor’s site manager together with the general contractor’s.

Certification is by field, and the field matters: a site manager certified for civil construction does not cover gas installations or external power networks. When you plan which work to take on, check first which fields your people are certified in. The same specialist cannot act on one project as both the contractor’s site manager and the investor’s site supervisor.

Lifts, boilers, gas: a second notification

Companies that install or repair lifts, boilers and pressure equipment or the gas systems of large heating plants, as well as those that build gas networks, also fall under the industrial safety law. They file a separate notification with the same inspectorate, again 10 working days in advance, and the people who work on these installations must hold practising permits or certificates of competence.

What can be done without a building permit

The Code has a long list of work for which the investor needs neither an urban planning certificate nor a permit: interior finishing; roof, floor and joinery repairs that do not change shapes and colours; replacing stoves and installations inside buildings; light partition walls that do not change the fire hazard class; and, in rural areas, single-storey houses under 150 square metres. The list also includes solar panels and heat pumps, and since August 2026 energy storage installations on the land of solar parks and of commercial, agricultural and industrial buildings.

For a finishing company this matters more than it seems: for most of this work, design documentation is optional, except on listed monuments and on work paid for with public money. If you are unsure where the list ends, the client can ask the town hall in writing, and it replies within 10 days.

Installing power plants that run on renewable energy is also exempt from VAT with no right of deduction — a detail that matters when you price a quote.

Quality: the manual, accidents and the warranty

Every company that carries out construction work draws up and approves a quality manual, valid for three years and then updated every year. On small jobs, the site manager plays the role of the quality system. For buildings of special importance and for those funded from the state budget, the system must be documented and certified, and any private investor can require it in the contract.

A few obligations are easy to forget until it is too late. A technical accident on site is reported to the inspectorate within 24 hours. Archaeological remains found during excavation are reported to the National Archaeological Agency within 24 hours. Materials specified in the project may be replaced only with a solution from the designer and with the investor’s agreement. Demolition waste is collected separately and handed to licensed operators.

And the warranty: five years from acceptance, during which hidden defects caused by the company are put right at your own expense. If a defect is not remedied immediately, the period is extended.

A foreign construction company in Moldova

For a construction company from Romania, from another EU member state or from further afield, Moldova has three rules that matter from day one.

Specialists certified in EU member states are recognised as certified here too, for design, construction, site management and laboratory testing. The certificate is translated into Romanian, legalised and registered with the ministry’s certification commission. You do not have to certify your engineers again from scratch.

The work is carried out by a legal person entered with the inspectorate. The option we recommend is a Moldovan SRL owned by the parent company: it has limited liability and notifies the inspectorate in its own name. A branch is not a legal person, and the parent company is fully liable for its obligations.

If the company works directly from abroad, the Tax Code counts the days. A construction site, an installation project or technical supervision that lasts more than six months becomes a permanent establishment and, for the income earned here, is taxed in Moldova as a resident business. Time worked by subcontractors is added to the general contractor’s, and a road or pipeline that moves along its route remains a single site. Double taxation treaties may set different thresholds, so check the one with your home country.

For foreign companies, we register the SRL or the branch, prepare the notification to the inspectorate and open the bank account. What is required from a non-resident founder is explained in the guide for foreign founders.

Which legal form to choose

For construction, an SRL. The Urban Planning Code gives the right to carry out construction work only to legal persons entered in the register, and limited liability matters in a field where the company is liable for five years for every job it hands over.

A tradesperson working alone has two options without a company. As an individual, they may carry out finishing, repairs and the replacement of internal installations on private property, but not gas work and not the shared installations of apartment blocks. As an independent entrepreneur, they may work with a single tax of 15% on income up to 1.2 million lei a year, but only in class 43.22 — plumbing, heating and air-conditioning installation. If they work for a company with more than nine employees, the relationship is treated as employment for tax purposes.

For a developer, one useful detail when exiting a project: if the land and the building change hands, the building permit remains valid with all its rights and obligations, and the new owner simply informs the town hall.

We handle the choice of CAEM codes, the articles of association, the filing at the Public Services Agency and the opening of the bank account. We also prepare the notification to the National Inspectorate for Technical Supervision, and we can take over the company’s accounting from the first month. What each service includes is set out on the corporate services page.