Vyacheslav Ionitsa
Despite such an impressive jump, the overall export balance, after a significant drop in the first half of the year, continues to remain negative. In the first seven months of this year, shipments abroad amounted to $1948.2 million, which is 5.7% less than in the corresponding period of 2024.
Geographically, exports over the six months decreased to the CIS by 22%, to the EU by 4% and to other countries by 5%.
Almost entirely the growth of exports in July was achieved by shipments of fruits and, strangely enough, sunflower seeds. Strange, because it is not the season for such trade, the sunflower of the new crop has not yet started to be harvested. So these supplies were from last year’s harvest.
Nevertheless, exports of fruit in July 2025 increased by 51% compared to last July, and sunflower seeds – by 3.3 times.
Exports of electrical machinery and electrical apparatus increased by 20%, apparel by 25%, and footwear by 2.7 times.
At the same time, in July the export of cereals decreased by 14%, and vegetable oil by 5 times.
At the same time, exports (of domestic goods) in January-July 2025 amounted to 76.9% of the total volume, which is 4% less than last year.
Re-exports decreased by 10.8% compared to the same period of 2024. The share of foreign goods re-exported after substantial processing amounted to 16%, while classical re-export of foreign goods amounted to 7.1%.
By country profile, it can be noted that the long decline of exports to countries such as Romania, Germany and Poland has stopped. To Romania it increased by 25%, to Germany by 46% and to Poland by 23%. And in the EU as a whole, exports increased by 41% in July 2025 compared to the same month in 2024.
In the CIS, it decreased by 7%, including to the Russian Federation by 4% and to Belarus by 10%. Exports to Kazakhstan increased by 5%.
Exports to other countries decreased by 18%, including to Turkey by 1.3%, to the USA by 41%, to the UK by 2%. Exports to China and Israel increased by 26% and 17%, respectively.
Import has traditionally grown. In July, its growth left “only” 6.1%, based on the rate of increase in export shipments in this month. In value terms, import supplies were estimated at $905.1 million in July. The growth amounted to 14.8% as compared to the corresponding month of the previous year. But for seven months in total, purchases of goods abroad increased by 18% and reached $6022.7 million.
The July jump in exports even led to the fact that the trade deficit in that month was 4.9% less than in June. But it was 10.8% higher compared to July 2024. Overall, the prevalence of imports over exports increased by 34.1% in the first seven months of this year, reaching the horrifying figure of $4074.5 million. This is more than double the entire volume of Moldovan exports over the same period.
Not surprisingly, the level of coverage of imports by exports of domestic goods decreased by another 8.2 points and amounted to only 32.3%. This is a very alarming indicator for the economy.
Commenting for Logos Press on the sudden jump in exports, economist Veaceslav Ionitsa said: “The data on commodity items will be published only in one or two weeks. However, I risk to assume that almost all the growth was provided by cherry supplies to Poland. Processors gave us a very good price for it this season, even higher than for sales in fresh form on the domestic market. And sunflower… This is our misfortune, the country is turning from an exporter of sunflower oil into its importer, producers prefer to export not the processed product, but the raw material – the seed”.
The economist believes that the July surge was a one-off and will not be repeated in the next months. But whether the export growth will continue at all, or whether we will continue to observe its decline, as we have been doing for more than two years, depends on Moldovan producers and the country’s authorities.
