Moldova’s exports of alcoholic beverages in the first three months of this year fell by 28%. Exports to the CIS in the period decreased two times following the ban imposed by Russia on the import of Moldovan wine, IPN reports, quoting the “Analysis of the financial situation of the winemaking sector following the ban imposed by the Russian authorities in September 2013”, which was made by the National Office of Vine and Wine with the assistance of the USAID CEED II Project.
The study was carried out based on the information collected from 18 Moldovan wine companies that exported large quantities of wine to Russia. The losses of these and other companies that supplied wine to Russia in 2013 alone exceeded US$18 million.
“These are direct financial losses, but other consequences of the ban are as serious. One of the consequences is the substantial increase in the pressure exerted by the loans taken out earlier. These companies account for about 63.6% of the long-term bank loans. Their major problems are related to the large quantities of stored products and the debts to banks and suppliers of raw material,” said the study author Andrei Crigan.
The winemaking companies also face such problems as the slow circulation of capital, the misbalance related to the financing of current assets and the rising pressure on winemakers that results in a higher number of bad loans, which this year rose by 5% on the end of last year, to 17%. In the economy, this figure stands at 13%.
The study recommends the authorities to intervene to diminish the consequences of the ban. Among the proposed measures are to create a fund for rescheduling winemakers’ loans, to subsidize the interest rates, especially on the loans for the post-harvest and processing infrastructure, to ease the lending conditions and to hasten the launch of leasing operations within the Wine Network project.
Minster of Agriculture and Food Industry Vasile Bumacov said the reorientation to other markets is the only long-term solution. “I’m glad that the wine companies understood this. We hope we will be able to significantly increase exports to the EU and the United States. Tomorrow I go to China, to which the supplies will also be raised. We are late with this reorientation, which should have been done in 2000 or after the first ban. But we must go on now more dynamically,” he stated.
