diff --git a/tools/mo/requirements.txt b/tools/mo/requirements.txt
index 0930fb079bc4f7..6567765ad9b09e 100644
--- a/tools/mo/requirements.txt
+++ b/tools/mo/requirements.txt
@@ -11,4 +11,3 @@ urllib3>=1.26.4
 requests>=2.25.1
 fastjsonschema~=2.15.1
 openvino-telemetry>=2022.1.0
-importlib-metadata; python_version < "3.8" and sys_platform == "win32"
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/tools/mo/setup.py b/tools/mo/setup.py
index 6a85fd6b6e86e3..8b949b658af258 100644
--- a/tools/mo/setup.py
+++ b/tools/mo/setup.py
@@ -42,16 +42,16 @@ def read_text(path):
 # Minimal set of dependencies
 deps_whitelist = ['networkx', 'defusedxml', 'numpy', 'openvino-telemetry']
 
-# for py37 and less on Windows need importlib-metadata in order to use entry_point *.exe files
-if sys.platform == 'win32' and sys.version_info[1] < 8:
-    deps_whitelist.append('importlib-metadata')
-
 deps = []
 with open('requirements.txt', 'rt') as req_file:
     for line in req_file.read().split('\n'):
         if line.startswith(tuple(deps_whitelist)):
             deps.append(line)
 
+# for py37 and less on Windows need importlib-metadata in order to use entry_point *.exe files
+if sys.platform == 'win32' and sys.version_info[1] < 8:
+    deps.append('importlib-metadata')
+
 
 class InstallCmd(install):
     def run(self):