Radu Marian
Radu Marian, a member of parliament from the ruling PAS party, told Newsmaker. He noted that among the issues likely to be considered by the new parliament and government will be the regulation of parcels from online platforms like Temu, Joom and others, which offer goods for pennies.
He said that on the one hand, it is an opportunity for people to buy things at lower prices, but the increasing flow of these parcels is seriously hurting local manufacturers.
“China invests heavily in its industry and provides huge subsidies, which leads to overproduction. As a consequence, goods become very cheap. But they undermine our local entrepreneurs, reduce their sales and prevent them from keeping jobs,” the MP said and added. – “We need to look for a solution that will not harm the economy and jobs in the long term.”
According to him, the discussion of possible innovations in this area will begin after the formation of the new government.
Similar discussions have started in other countries. For example, Estonia is also thinking about regulation, because the flow of goods from Chinese online platforms has increased tenfold in a short time.
Germany has launched an investigation into Temu in order to check the conditions for merchants and the company’s attitude towards suppliers.
In Italy, the Shein platform (which is not yet so active in Moldova, but dominates the Ukrainian market) was fined one million euros for misleading buyers about the environmental impact of the products it sells.
Europeans and Moldovan parliamentarians are concerned not only about disloyal competition, but also about the questionable safety and quality of products supplied from these marketplaces.
At a press conference last week, Moldova’s acting Finance Minister Victoria Belous said: “The Ministry of Finance is looking for the most effective method of regulating parcel trade. In any case, the point in this issue will be set by the new government, which will deal with taxation in this sector of economy”.
Last year, almost 10 million parcels with clothes, shoes, cosmetics, electronics and household appliances were imported to Moldova, most of them from such sites as Temu, Joom, Aliexpress, iHerb, Shein, MakeUp, etc. with a total value of about 300 million euros.
