AgriMin: Romania will remain grain exporter for a long time ahead

Romania will remain a grain-exporting state for a long time ahead, as it produces more raw materials than it consumes, says Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Adrian Chesnoiu.

He mentioned that reducing the trade deficit in agri-food products has become a goal for "everyone," although this did not happened in recent years. The only years in which Romania had a surplus in trade in agri-food products were 2013 and 2014, with an increase of 300 million euros and 500 million euros, respectively, while last year there was a deficit of over two billion in this sector.

"It was 2.2 billion last year. Everyone proposes [deficit reduction]. The trade balance has become a goal for everyone, but practically nothing has happened. Romania will remain a grain exporter for a long time ahead, because that has been our history. We must be realistic: we produce much more raw material than we consume. Instead, what we need to do is understand the market mechanisms," Adrian Chesnoiu told AGERPRES.

In this context, the minister says that when it comes to building a strategic plan, it is important to think about the effects it has over time, over a short, medium and long term. "When it comes to processing, you need to have large capacities, farmers to be associated in producer groups or cooperatives so that as much raw material as possible is processed at the lowest possible cost, because in the food industry and in the processing industry the profit margins are very low," said the MADR chief.

Last year, bakery products ranked second in terms of imports, after pork, but the minister said it was not about bread imports, "an image that has spread in the press that we produce wheat and import frozen bread." A