Moldova says it has lost its grain markets to Ukraine

Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry of Moldova Vladimir Bola said that the country has lost a significant part of its markets due to the “grain deal,” mybusiness.md reports.

According to the minister, in the fall of 2022, grain prices in Moldova collapsed due to the flow of Ukrainian grain at dumping prices. In January 2023, the situation became even worse due to the “grain deal”.

Moldova is a grain exporting country. The republic supplies up to 30% of its grain to Romania, while the rest was shipped to 23 countries, and now it is sent to only 14 countries, the minister said.

“Turkey and Romania were our leading countries, where we supplied a lot of grain, but since the new year… we have lost this market, we have zero imports to Turkey,” Bola said.

He added that Moldova has increased its exports to Romania, but sells grain at very low prices, which is why the country is in a very difficult situation.

As a reminder, on May 6, Vladimir Bola informed Ukrainian Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solsky about Chisinau’s intention to ban grain imports from Ukraine. In response to Moldova’s restrictions on Ukrainian imports, Kyiv began preparing a resolution to ban Moldovan imports. On May 11, it was reported that Moldova decided not to ban grain imports from Ukraine.

Tags: grain, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Turkey