Moldova authorities have no official news on resuming wine exports

The agreement on resuming wine exports to the Russian Federation, reached by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Voronin, hasn’t been yet confirmed by any official news issued for the Agro-Industrial Agency “Moldova-Vin”, sources within the Agency told Info-Prim Neo. The cited sources couldn’t say when the Moldovan wine exports to the Russian Federation are to resume, specifying only that the Moldovan party is ready for that at any time. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at the last week’s meeting with his Moldovan counterpart that the Moscow Government ordered the resuming of the Moldovan wine imports to the Russian market. According to the Russian media, Voronin declared previously that Moldova fulfilled all the requirements by the Russian Control Bodies as regards the quality of the Moldovan wine, but the agreement between the 2 states reached at the Minsk CIS summit in November 2006, on export resuming is not being respected. “As you well know, the first bilateral actions have been taken on the co-operation reinstating in some food branches such as meat and vegetal production”, Putin stated during his meeting with the Moldovan president. The Russian head of state mentioned that according to recent statistics, “generally speaking, the relations are developing well, especially in the economic sector”. Chairman of the “Rospotrebnadzor” Service, Ghenadii Oniscenco, has previously said that “the smallest deviation from the production’s exposed safety and quality will be seriously sanctioned, even by applying a new embargo on the wine imports”. According to him, Russia instituted preferential conditions for the delivery of Moldova’s wines to the Russian market, including the border check up of each wine consignment. Experts estimate that the loss of wine exports from Moldova as a result of the “wine crisis” would be more than 200 mln USD. Russia prohibited the wine and brandy imports from Moldova in March 2006 on grounds that they contain harmful substances.