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The state reserve of agricultural products should be used only for the purpose for which it was created, and when operations are necessary to change certain quantities of agricultural products from the state reserve, decisions should be taken in such a way that they do not influence the market, said the president of the Romanian Association of Agricultural Products Traders (ARCPA), Vasile Varvaroi, Wednesday night, at a meeting with the press.
"The state reserve is meant to provide agricultural products in emergency situations. The secrecy of the data in the state reserve is easy to understand, I do not think there is a state in which access to the total quantities in the state reserve for this purpose is a publicly communicated element. That does not raise a problem, because it is a fixed stock and the amount of wheat that we have at the state reserve should not differ very much, but problems arise at the state reserve when it is used for purposes other than the one for which it was created, i.e. as a tool to influence the market. And I refer here to the system of loans from the state reserve that has been working, unfortunately, for years," said the head of ARCPA.
He stressed that the way the products in the state reserve are refreshed must change, i.e. sold only at the time they need to be refreshed and bought at the time they are put back in stock.
For his part, Victor Beznea, Vice-President of ARCPA, added that, although Romania has been in the European Union for 13 years, we still do not have basic notions related to the single market and free market, and in these conditions decisions are made in ways that are hard to understand.
"We have 13 years since joining the EU, but we do not have any very important notions of free market, of single market. There was a lot of talk about food security that was at risk when the decision was made to ban grain exports. This is not the case for Romania, it is not an island thousands of kilometres away from any source of wheat. Romania is part of a single market, Romania has four ports, which belong to the EU, not just Romania's ports. I'll give you an example, there are 6-7 counties severely affected by drought this year. They'll move logistically, they'll have to buy the wheat from a certain distance, instead of locally. Suppose the figures on the basis of which the export was banned were correct and we no longer had local wheat, what could we do? We cross to the Bulgarians, to the Serbs, we add 15-30 euros. We just forgot that we are not just Romania, we are part of the single market. The entire Europe does not have wheat, then we could have talked about Europe's food security, but we did not have to ban exports because there was no longer a tonne of wheat in Romania. Regarding the notion of the free market, I don't think it's to be criticized that quantity is secret, it's militarized, but there is a good practice in all the countries around us. This year we had the example of Russia, when it takes out its stocks it sells by auction, transparently. I think things need to be changed here. I don't understand why we should be wary of this transparency. When you do the reserve refreshing, let them know in advance that you're selling. I think this is good for the country," stressed Victor Beznea.
He also said it was important for the authorities to make forecasts and communicate data on agricultural production, as do all the states in the world.
