During the last 30 years, Romania has cheaply and in large quantities exported raw materials (wheat, corn, sunflower) and imported products obtained by processing them. For example, domestic beet sugar production was 270,000 tons, up from 700,000 tons in 1990.
FoodPhoto: Davide Bonaldo/SOPA Images / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
Also during the last 30 years, in the field of animal husbandry, livestock has been reduced to certain categories of animals and, implicitly, the domestic production of milk and meat has decreased, writes the president of INS Tudorel Andrei in his recent book “Romania’s Foreign Trade with agri-food products”, dedicated to the shortage of agri-food products
In milk, production was reduced by almost half
“Such examples could go on with a long list of agri-food products. We are producing less and less, although “the population’s domestic consumption of agri-food products has increased, as a result of the increase in incomes and the more diversified offer from the store chains that have developed at the national level”, explains Tudorel Andrei.
Unfortunately, the production units in the country did not take advantage of the changes in the domestic market, and the domestic demand was satisfied by massive imports, says the head of the INS.
For example, explains Tudorel Andrei, we grow and export important quantities of sunflower production that are processed in economic units abroad; following the production process carried out in economic units outside the country, both a main product and residues are obtained that could be used in combination with other products, for example, to obtain animal feed. Often, however, they are imported by economic agents from the country for animal feed; on the production and distribution chain, part of the animals are exported as live animals that are slaughtered, in turn, in slaughterhouses abroad and where they are processed to obtain meat products that, in the end, are returned to us, for import consumption , at high prices.
Thus, such products are imported, in turn, by various companies and are capitalized by chains of stores in the country that have national or regional expansion.
Consequently, Romania accumulates a trade surplus from the sale of sunflowers but accumulates a much larger deficit from oil imports and inevitably accumulates, year after year, a large deficit in the trade balance with agro-food products.