The foreign trade of the Transnistrian region has decreased by a third in the first five months of this year. Exports have plummeted by half, and the main category of import – energy resources – increasingly appears as having an “unidentified” origin, reports the IPN correspondent from the region.
According to the data from the authority performing customs functions in the Transnistrian region, the total volume of the region’s foreign trade in the period from January to May 2025 was 652.6 million US dollars. This represents a decrease of 36% compared to the same period last year. Imports fell by 28%, reaching 522.6 million dollars, while exports fell by 54%, down to just 130 million dollars.
The decline in exports has affected almost all product categories. Agri-food products (cereals, oilseeds, vegetables, fruits) remained the main export category, representing almost 39% of deliveries. Metal exports (including pipes), which previously ranked second, have dropped more than 3.5 times, to $27.7 million. A notable detail is the emergence in the statistics of the category “components and parts for aircraft” – only in April and May were such products exported worth over four million dollars, a category that did not exist in the previous year.
A special case is the collapse of energy product exports: from 76.6 million dollars in 2024 to 12.1 million in 2025 – a decrease of 84%. This decline is caused by the cessation of gas deliveries from “Gazprom” starting January 1, which led to the shutdown of the Moldavskaia GRES power plant – the main source of electricity, which was previously exported to the right bank of the Nistru. As a result, the “electricity” category, which previously ranked second in volume after metals, has completely disappeared from export statistics.
The geographical distribution of exports has also changed. In 2025, over half of the exports (56.5%) were directed towards the right bank of the Republic of Moldova, approximately 14.6% went to Romania, and only 7% – to Russia.
Imports in 2025 maintained their energy orientation — energy products accounted for nearly half of all imports (about 275 million dollars). However, the structure of these imports has changed: if in 2024 over 91% of fuel imports came from Russia, in 2025 the volume of deliveries from Russia dropped to 73.7 million dollars — five times less. At the same time, over 57% of all gas deliveries, according to local customs authorities, did not mention the country of origin.
The increase in energy imports in May was significant: just in that month, resources worth about 191 million dollars were imported – almost 70% of the total volume of energy products imported in the period from January to May.
In second place in the import structure are agri-food products — with a slight increase, followed by machinery, chemical products, and metals. The overall structure of imports shows a high dependence on external deliveries: according to official data, Russia’s share in the region’s imports was 16.9%, Moldova’s — 12.4%, Ukraine’s — 7.6%, and Romania’s — 6.4%. However, the largest share (over 30%) belongs to goods with “unidentified origin”.
