In October 2025, the Moldovan government imposed a de facto ban on sugar imports from Serbia to the Moldovan market for a period of 200 days under the pretext of protecting the sector. This measure was presented as a supportive measure to give local sugar producers another hypothetical chance to “perk up”. Even at the cost of quite real sacrifices imposed on the entire food industry of Moldova. Let us assess what happened in the end.
The sugar market is not about “sweetness”, but about economy in its purest form: excess supply, rising costs and managerial mistakes are instantly converted into price. That is why there is always a lot of information noise around sugar – slogans “let’s provide the market with our own”, “the market needs protection”, “importers are enemies”. But the noise does not change the main thing: the market does not punish imports – the market punishes inefficiency. And today this is evident all over Europe.
