During the last 30 years, Romania exported raw materials (wheat, corn, sunflower) cheaply and in large quantities and imported products obtained by processing them. For example, the domestic production of beet sugar was 270,000 tons against 700,000 tons in 1990.

In addition, over the past 30 years, the livestock industry has been reduced to certain categories of animals and, implicitly, the domestic production of milk and meat has decreased, writes INS President Tudorel Andrei in his recent book Romania’s Foreign Trade in Agri-Food Products. dedicated to the shortage of agro-food products

Production of milk has almost halved

“Such examples can be continued in a long list of agro-food products. We produce less and less, although “domestic consumption of agri-food products by the population has increased as a result of rising incomes and a more diversified offer of store chains that have developed at the national level,” explains Andrii Tudorel. .

Unfortunately, the production units in the country did not take advantage of the changes in the domestic market, and the domestic demand was met at the expense of mass imports, says the head of the INS.

For example, Tudorel Andrii explains, we grow and export a significant amount of sunflower products, which are processed in economic units abroad; after the production process, which is carried out in economic units outside the country, receive both the main product and residues that can be used in combination with other products, for example, to obtain animal feed. However, they are often imported by business entities from the country to feed animals; in the chain of production and distribution, some animals are exported as live animals, which are in turn slaughtered in slaughterhouses abroad and where they are processed to obtain meat products that are ultimately returned to us for imported consumption, at high prices.

Thus, such products are imported, in turn, by various companies and capitalized by chain stores in the country that have national or regional expansion.

Consequently, Romania accumulates a positive trade balance from the sale of sunflowers, but accumulates a much larger deficit from oil imports and inevitably accumulates, year after year, a large trade deficit in agri-food products.