The competitiveness of Moldova's agri-food trade with E.U. after DCFTA implementations

This paper analyzes the changes that occurred in Moldova’s trade of agricultural and food products since the implementation of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with European Union. The research will include the analysis of Moldova’s foreign trade activity from the perspective of agricultural and food products, the changes that occurred in their structure, dynamics and competitiveness. The data used will underline the period 2015-2019, regarding the agricultural and food trade commodities. The competitiveness will be assessed through trade indicators as Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantages (RSCA) and Trade Balance Index (TBI) based on product mapping approach. As result we delimitate four groups of products classified according to their comparative advantages/disadvantages and export specialization. By analyzing the obtained results we have found three agri-food products that have comparative advantages and are net exporters on E.U. market. About half of agri-food products that fall into the category of comparative advantage but are net importers. The competitiveness of this group has potential to grow and it could be improved.