Romania Could Become Leading Foodstuff Exporter To EU

Romania could become an important exporter of agricultural products to the European Union in less than ten years, if a flexible fiscal policy is adopted for the agricultural sector and if the market is better organized, Agriculture Minister Dacian Ciolos told Agerpres. Only with a coherent and flexible fiscal policy for the agriculture and a better organization of the farmers and the market in Romania can we turn from an importer of farming products into an important exporter within the EU," he said. In his opinion, the production potential of small farms needs to be optimized, while taking measures to find a way to actually sell such production. "It is important that the Common Agricultural Policy should consider the specificity of each country, such as Romania and Poland, for example, where there are numerous small farms. The Policy should support such farms to access the Common Market. Small farmers are forced to comply with very tough norms, which would probably not be necessary on short commercial routes," Ciolos added. According to his Polish counterpart, Marek Sawicki, Poland managed to become an important exporter of agricultural products to European markets five years after accession. "Poland was a major importer (i.e. of agricultural products) before 2004, but, in only five years after integration, we managed to sell more to the Community markets than we bought," Minister Sawicki said. He added that Poland had fully used pre-accession funds as well as the first budget tranche of the Community funds for 2004-2006 allocated for agriculture and rural development.

Romania"s National Prognosis Commission has announced that the status for 2005 - 2007 was characterized by a significant increase in foodstuff imports, well above exports. However, the gap decreased, from 26 percentage points in 2005 to less than 6 percentage points in 2007, indicating that domestic production has the capacity to cover domestic consumption. The Commission estimates for 2008 and 2009 indicate that the weight of the deficit generated by the food & beverage industry within the total deficit will decrease to some 9%.