Moldova loses ground on the agricultural market to other countries of the region because the state subsidizes the agricultural producers insufficiently, said the chairman of the National Confederation of Trade Unions Oleg Budza, IPN reports.
“The agricultural producers from other countries receive subsidies from the state and use them to cover a series of costs associated with the cultivation and sale of production. As a result, the prices of their products are lower than ours. For example, looking at the Moldovan apples that cost 28 lei per kilogram and at the Polish ones that cost 20 lei, the residents of Moscow will choose the Polish apples that, by the way, do not differ much from ours by quality,” stated Oleg Budza.
According to him, if the situation in Moldova does not change, when the Free Trade Agreement with the EU comes into force, the national products will lose ground to the European ones as the producers in the EU are subsidized adequately. Consequently, Moldova will lose more workplaces.
“This and many other economic problems must be examined attentively before signing the Free Trade Agreement and the Association Agreement with the EU. It is evident that Moldova will encounter difficulties in meeting a number of conditions for being able to bilaterally adopt such a document,” said Oleg Budza.
He also said we should not forget that Moldova, unlike other countries, didn’t ensure the transition to energy saving equipment in production and the costs for a product in Moldova are much higher than in Europe.