Development of the food sector in the Republic of Moldova

Abstract

The food sector of the Republic of Moldova has undergone significant changesin the past decades. Food processing companies and large scale collective and state farmshave been privatized, markets were liberalized, and economies have been integrated intothe global food systems. As a result of liberalization and privatization processes, the state-controlled vertical integration in the agri-food industry had collapse.Latter on, private vertical coordination systems have emerged and started to grow rapidlyas a response to consumer demand for food quality and safety on the one hand and thefarms’ production constraints caused by factor market imperfection on the other. The maindrivers of the integration processes are private business operators and traders. However,the efficiency of the newly emerged food value chains is still low. This investigation wasbased on analysis of the official statistical data, qualitative and quantitative studies andother relevant publications. A significant part of analysis was done in the framework of theFP7 project “AGRICISTRADE”. In this paper the importance and the most recent changesof the food industry in the Republic of Moldova were demonstrated, the main impedimentswere analyzed and proposals to foster the food sector development were provided.