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Romania spends approximately 64 million Euro per year for purchasing import potatoes, despite that they can be produced locally, declared on Thursday, the minister of Agriculture, Adrian Oros, during an online debate regarding the potato market.
"Today, according to the data from APIA (Agency for Payments and Intervention in Agriculture), we have a real potato cultivated surface of around 28,000 hectares, and the internal potato production covers, according to those said from Covasna, a maximum of 40% of consumption, the rest of 60% of consumption we import. In 2019, the commercial balance deficit for potatoes was somewhere around 64 million Euro. Basically, we, as a country, spend 64 million Euro to buy potatoes which we could be producing in our own country. The potato consumption per inhabitant is about 100 kilograms per year," Adrian Oros said.
The potato production obtained in 2020 has slowly passed 2 million tons, but registered a drop as opposed to the previous year, by almost 21%, when it totalled 2.62 million tons, according to the data by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADR), upon the request of AGERPRES.
Romania reported 10 years ago potato productions of 3.5 - 4 million tons, but on larger surfaces, namely between 200,000 and 250,000 hectares, but in the last 5 years cultivated surfaces have constantly dropped below 200,000 hectares. The traditional zones for potato cultivation are Harghita, Covasna, Brasov, Suceava and Sibiu.
