Republic of Moldova's Foreign Trade: Quality Specialization
Republic of Moldova's Foreign Trade: Quality Specialization

Summary/Abstract: The last decade, external trade of Republic of Moldova, especially exports have showed very poor performances. Unlike imports, Moldavian exports grow very slow, and this is determined in the main by a reduction of industrial production. This paper examines the pattern of Moldavian international trade specialization and to what extent has it managed to change during the transition process to market economy. Agricultural sector and food processing industry still dominate the categories of products for which Moldova exhibits the largest degree of trade specialization. By contrast, high-technology sectors are prevalent among the categories for which our country is import-dependent. The originality of the research confirms existing concerns about the quality of Moldavian exports specialization, their low performance and especially the non-competitive structure of product groups. Main trends were identified for Moldavian foreign trade during the transition period along with its degree of specialization. Research methodology was based on 1995-2010 statistical series on the evolution and structure of foreign trade imports and exports (NBS and UNCTAD data), as well as on Lafay index used to determine the specialization.

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