Veaceslav Ionita: Transnistrian goods are more appealing to EU than the ones produced on the right bank of the Nistru

The Transnistrian enterprises will greater benefit from the autonomous trading preferences that will be offered by the European Union to Moldova because they have capacities to export to the EU, economic analyst Veaceslav Ionita stated for Info-Prim Neo. According to the analyst, the companies operating in the Transnistrian region made a greater use of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) Plus in 2007 as their products are competitive in the EU. He gave as example the products of the Rabnitsa-based Metallurgical Plant. Ionita says that Moldova’s foreign trade rose by 30% last year also owing to the Transnistrian goods, which are in demand on the EU markets. According to the expert, the EU grants asymmetric trade regimes to the poor countries. He said that the customs duties in the EU’s foreign trade are an insignificant instrument for protecting the markets. The most important instrument is the strict product quality requirements. For this reason, Moldovan companies’ products are not competitive. “The cancellation of customs duties can ensure only 10% of the success on the European market. There are hundreds of economic entities that benefited from the GSP Plus incentive, but no new Moldovan exporter appeared on the EU markets after the implementation of this system,” the expert said. Ionita stated that those that exported to the EU under the GSP Plus incentive did not feel its advantages because the Moldovan leu has constantly appreciated and they lost the 5-10% of the customs duties won when exporting to the EU owing to this. “The Moldovan producers are aware of the reality. The reality is that we have the best soil, but produce sevenfold less than in Europe or than in any of the five-year period in the former USSR. We do not have industry and competitive goods and the general state of affairs is appalling,” the analyst said. Speaking about the situation in wine industry, Veaceslav Ionita said that only 20 companies in this sector have an efficient marketing and penetrated such important markets as Germany, France, the UK, the US and others. “There are companies that work in normal circumstances, have nothing to do with the Agroindustrial Agency “Moldova Vin”, have their own associations that promote the wine in concert and have joint stands at international exhibitions. They succeed because they behave as the businesspeople should and because this is how the new business works,” Ionita said. “To increase the competitiveness of the Moldovan goods, ‘all the Soviet dinosaurs’ – the companies established instead of the former Soviet companies whose management created and developed nothing - should be extinguished. When the former USSR was dismembered, they had been lucky to gain assets that they use up to now,” the expert said, stressing that such companies will exist at most two-three years more. Among the CIS states, only Moldova and Georgia obtained the GSP Plus incentive for exports to the EU. No CIS country benefits from asymmetric trade. The Council of the European Union will sanction the granting of autonomous trading preferences to Moldova on January 21.