KISHINYOV, Moldova -- The Moldovan government formally launched its privatization program Wednesday, announcing a nationwide auction to sell shares in 11 state firms for vouchers distributed last year.


"I hope that through voucher auctions a new class of proprietors will be formed. It would become the cornerstone of the free market in Moldova," said Privatization Minister Ceslav Ciobanu at the opening of a republican auction center.


Forty-seven computerized centers throughout Moldova opened their doors Wednesday to ease the process of obtaining shares.


Ciobanu said that medium- and large-sized enterprises would be privatized at the auctions, giving virtually every citizen a chance to obtain shares.


According to the government program, about 1,600 state companies, or 34 percent of all state property in Moldova, should be privatized for vouchers by September 1995. Vouchers have already been distributed to 90 percent of Moldovan citizens.


Unlike those used in Russia, they bear the name of the owner and cannot be bought or sold and they differ in their nominal value depending on the individual's work record in Moldova.


Small enterprises, mostly representing the trade and services sector, are to be privatized by the end of the year at open outcry auctions.


The government plans to stabilize the economy through mass privatization. In the first half of 1994, there was an unprecedented decline of 32.1 percent in industrial output compared to the same period of last year.


"Mass privatization in Moldova is the only way to revive industrial production and there is no other alternative," Lynge Nielsen, the International Monetary Fund resident representative in Moldova, said.


The self-proclaimed Dnestr republic in the east of Moldova, which accounts for 37 percent of the country's industrial capacity, refused to participate in mass privatization.