Volume and variety of production significantly drops in Moldova – MEC

Analyses show that the volume and assortment of production in Moldova has significantly dropped. Moldova is using 60% of the possibilities offered by the preference system GSP+, the head of the Trade Policy Department of the Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC), Octavian Calmac declared at a press conference. According to him, within the frameworks of the subcommittee II: “Trade and Investments”, which took place in Brussels on October 9-10, there were discussed the growth rhythms of exports to the EU member countries. They constituted about 6% in the first 8 months of the year. According to Calamac this is an insufficient rhythm, and the level of using GSP+ is of only 60%. According to the cited source, the cause of this is that all the production was focused on 2-3 basic sectors – alcoholic beverages, fabrics as well as grains and walnut kernel, which constitute about 70% of all the exports of the Republic of Moldova. If Moldova exported about 700 groups of products in the 90ies, now it focused on producing 3 groups and any fluctuations on the export market or introduction of supplementary requests creates difficulties on the internal market. On the second hand, Calmac declared, GSP+ includes some products, which because of the existent conditions cannot be produced in Moldova. Together with the implementation of the new strategies and adjustment of standards to the European ones, the export potential of Moldova will grow, the official declares. Moldova benefits from the GSP+ system since January 1, 2007. According to the Ministry of Economy and Commerce, the representatives of EU expressed their availability to launch in short-time internal procedures for offering Autonomous Trade Preferences (ATP) to the Republic of Moldova.