What the domain pays and how big it is
The tiles above show no average wage, and the reason is that there is no single figure true of the whole domain.
Division 58 paid around 36,500 lei gross a month at the end of 2025. Division 59 paid 19,445. The national average was roughly 16,400. The gap of more than seventeen thousand between the two does not mean publishers pay twice as well as film studios: division 58 holds, alongside publishing houses, the game and software publishers, who are largely residents of the information technology parks and pay at IT industry rates.
Either figure would mislead half the people reading this page, so what stayed in the tiles are the numbers that cannot be read wrongly: how many companies there are and how many people work in them.
In division 58, 523 economic agents reported for 2025, with 1,780 employees and sales revenue of 1.64 billion lei. In division 59 — 295 economic agents, with 476 employees and 419 million lei. In other words, all of Moldovan film, video and audio production together counts fewer permanent staff than one mid-sized factory.
That number does not mean the branch is small; it means it works with per-project collaborators. A film or a video campaign is made by a team assembled for a few weeks and dispersed afterwards. For anyone opening a studio now this has a direct consequence: the main cost is not payroll but contracting, and the contracts with collaborators must settle from day one who owns what comes out.
What the state does not ask for, and what it asks instead
No class in divisions 58 and 59 is licensed and none requires an authorisation. The only permits touching the section this domain belongs to are the broadcasting licence and the retransmission authorisation, both from audiovisual, not from here. The distinction is worth keeping: broadcasting is licensed, producing and publishing are not.
In place of permits, though, stand two registers, and both can stop a business that has already started.
The National Book Chamber stops the printing, not the company
Article 15(2) of Law 939/2000 is written as a duty of the printer, which is what makes it easy for a publisher to miss: the printer accepts the order for publishing production only where the customer holds the CZU index and the ISBN, ISMN or ISSN numbers assigned by the National Book Chamber.
So the company registers in three days and needs nothing else in order to exist — but the first book does not go to press until you have been past the Chamber. The Chamber assigns the international standard numbers, applies the CZU index, does cataloguing in publication, and charges for these services.
After publication comes the second duty. Four legal deposit copies go out free of charge, sent by the printer at the publisher expense, through the National Book Chamber: one to the Chamber, two to the National Library, one to the Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences — and for children and young adult books, one to the “Ion Creanga” National Children Library. The duty applies even if you print abroad.
The technical box of every edition must carry the ISBN. It is not a formatting formality: it is what ties the copy to the national register.
The Cinematographic Register stops distribution, not filming
The Cinematography Law 116/2014 nowhere says you need anything in order to make a film. It says, at article 9(1), that legal persons have the right to distribute films on the territory of the Republic of Moldova only after being registered in the Cinematographic Register, administered by the National Cinematography Centre. Paragraph (2) adds that every film, before being distributed, must obtain a classification certificate and an exploitation visa.
The exploitation visa is defined by the law as the certificate confirming the legality of the film import and setting the rules for its distribution and exploitation. Films shown at international festivals or in cultural exchanges organised in Moldova are exempt from both.
The sanction is not an administrative fine but an administrative measure with direct effect: the Centre may suspend or withdraw the classification certificate, strike the person from the Cinematographic Register, and order the immediate cessation of the activities for which the measure was taken.
A cinema falls into the same logic, even though it does not appear in the code tables above: a film is not shown publicly without a classification certificate and an exploitation visa.
Three classes out of ten fall under the IT park regime
This is the least obvious piece of information on the page, and its effect on a business plan is large.
Article 8 of Law 77/2016 lists the activities that may be carried on as the principal activity of a resident of an information technology park. The list is written by CAEM class, not by division, and three of them fall in this domain:
- 58.21, publishing of computer games;
- 58.29, publishing of other software;
- 59.12, motion picture, video and television programme post-production — but limited to special effects services (59.12.14) and animated film services (59.12.15), and conditional on the use of specialised high-performance computing equipment.
Put simply: an animation studio and a visual effects studio qualify for the IT park regime. The same studio, doing editing, colour or sound for a documentary, does not. A book publisher does not qualify. A newspaper does not qualify. A record label does not qualify. A game publisher does qualify, including when it publishes the game it made itself.
The basic rule of residency is that the eligible activity must generate at least 70% of sales revenue, which matters precisely for a mixed studio doing both animation and ordinary production. How to apply and how the tax is calculated are set out in the Moldova IT Park guide and can be checked against your own figures with the tax calculator.
Copyright is the goods, not a by-product
In other domains, the contract with a collaborator governs the work. Here it governs the property.
Law 939/2000 treats the publishing contract as an act that transfers rights and requires minimum content of it, including the number of copies the publisher hands free of charge to the rights holder and the funds from which the work is published. A publisher may publish and republish copyright-protected works only for the term set in the publishing contract — not for as long as the books sit in the warehouse.
For audiovisual production, where the team is made of per-project collaborators, the question of who owns the finished film has no default answer favourable to the studio. It is settled by contract, before filming, or it is not settled at all.
This is the only domain in the category where a lawyer read at the beginning costs less than one called at the end.
An SRL, in almost every case.
Liability stays limited to the share capital, there is no minimum, the form admits wholly foreign founders, and it is the one the institutions buying through public procurement require — textbooks, printed matter, video production commissioned by authorities. It also fits IT park residency, if one of the three eligible classes is your principal activity.
A sole trader turns up often with a photographer or a camera operator working alone, and it makes sense as long as you sign no contracts with indemnity clauses. The moment a corporate client asks you to warrant copyright in the delivered material, the unlimited liability of the holder — with their entire personal estate — becomes a risk out of all proportion to the value of the contract.
A joint-stock company has no place at the start. It is a form designed for capital raised from several investors, not for a publishing house or a studio growing title by title and project by project.
