Wineries back distribution of quotas in the preferential export to EU proposed by Government

Moldovan wineries will be able to benefit of 10% of the quota of 600,000 decaliters of wine granted by the EU to Moldova for 2008 within the Autonomous Trade Preferences regime, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to a set of regulations recently adopted by the Government, the respective authorizations on the amount of the quota will be issued by the Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC) on the basis of the principles “first come – first served”, that is, according to the order of receiving the applications for each stock of goods, during a 30-day term, free of charge. Minister of Economy Igor Dodon told a news conference he had met with representatives of 40 wineries and they accepted the mechanism of distributing the quotas, proposed by the Government. In his opinion, this is a transparent and fair mechanism, which does not allow for certain companies to monopolize this exporting segment. Dodon specifed this quota of 600,000 decaliters granted by the EU for 2008 refered only to the grape-wine and it is sufficient, taking into account that Moldova had exported 1M decaliters to the EU in 2007. The quota will rise year by year, doubling by 2012. On the other hand, the EU imposes no customs taxes for other alcoholic drinks stronger than 15 degrees, as cognacs, champagnes, beer. “For example, the customs tax for champagnes was about 50 eurocents per liter before the autonomous trade preferences. Therefore, the exporters will save substantially, and our products will become more competitive on the EU market,” minister Dodon said. He mentioned 14 companies which had already applied for the authorizations on the distributed quota, as Winery Milestii Mici, Vinaria Bostovan, Acorex Wine. They are going to receive their authorizations as soon as the regulation is published in the Official Gazette, most likely on Friday. In order to monitor the respective transactions, the Customs Service is to allow the preferential export to the EU countries only if shown the MEC’s export authorization. The Customs Service will keep the record of the goods exported to the EU in this regime and will present the respective data to the MEC by the fifth of every month. The EU has also established quotas on exporting cereals (wheat, barley,) meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, bird eggs and sugar. In the opinion of the Economy Minister, distributing quotas for these products will be simpler. For example, for the white sugar, as only two producers operate on the market, while in winemaking there operate about 200 companies. Speaking on distributing quotas on animal products, the minister said Moldova, so far, had not got the right to export such products to the European markets. “A mission from the European Commission is in Moldova these days, examining the safety of these products. We hope their report will be a positive one and we’ll start the exports till later this year,” Dodon said.