Roads in Moldova: from colonial logic to regional development

You can read the first three articles in this series here, here, and here.

In Moldova, there is a special belief in the power of roads. It’s worth noting: build a highway, repair an access road, connect a district to the center—and a sense of the future immediately fills the air. It’s as if development is already waiting on the sidelines, just waiting for the asphalt to be laid.

It’s a convenient belief. That is precisely why the road has become the main symbol of the state’s attention to the periphery—understandable, visible, physically tangible. And that is precisely why it is so convenient for political rhetoric: arrived, opened, cut the ribbon, left.

But a road is not development. If a region is economically weak, a road reinforces that weakness. It becomes a convenient corridor for the outflow of what little remains.

This is the main paradox of infrastructure: the same road can be an artery of development, or it can be a drain.

Science has long described this trap. The growth of the center does not simply outpace the periphery—it feeds off it. Through roads, markets, migration, and investment decisions, the center draws talent, capital, and added value from the periphery into itself. And the better the physical connection between the center and the periphery, the more efficiently this pump works—if the periphery lacks its own economic function.

The “Center-Periphery” Problem

A new highway opens up access to the center’s markets for the periphery. But at the same time, it opens the periphery up to goods, services, retail chains, and competitors from the center. If local businesses are weaker, the periphery does not benefit.

History provides a harsh but useful illustration. Colonial infrastructure—railways in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—was often built not to develop the territories, but to extract resources. Routes were determined by the location of gold, manganese, cotton, and ports. The roads connected resource zones with export points.

In Soviet Moldova, the logic of transportation worked similarly. The road network was not created to establish horizontal connections between regions as independent economic entities. It was created according to the administrative logic of the center: all roads led to Chisinau—not only physically, but also institutionally. Cargo moved toward the processing center.

The Moldovan transport system largely reproduces this logic to this day. It does not create horizontal connectivity between regions. It creates a vertical link between each region and the center.

This is not an abstract theory. Over the past ten years, Chisinau has grown by 16.7%—to 720,000 residents, nearly a third of the country’s total population. The South region lost 26% of its residents, the North—23.4%. In some districts, the decline exceeded 28–29%.

Today, the flow system works like this: first, people travel by road to get documents. Then—to see a doctor. Then—to attend university. Then—to find work. Then—they never return.

The road is not the answer. It is merely a question paved in asphalt. If a region lacks its own strategy, the road cannot replace it.

Comrat: Route R34 as a Test of Autonomy

Comrat is located about 100 kilometers from Chisinau. The R34 highway is the main artery connecting the administrative center of Gagauzia with the capital. It is a good road by Moldovan standards. It allows you to reach Chisinau in about an hour and a half. It gives Comrat access to the capital’s markets, services, institutions, banks, hospitals, and retail chains.

But it is also the route along which commuter migration flows—people who leave to work in Chisinau and return home only after the main added value has been created elsewhere, not in Comrat. It is along this route that young people leave after school, college, or university—and often do not return. It is along this route that goods from large retail chains arrive, displacing local small businesses. It is precisely because of this that raw materials are sent to processors located outside of Comrat.

The balance of flows is not in the region’s favor. More people are leaving than are returning. Value added is generated to a greater extent outside the region than within it. Goods from the center flow in at a higher rate than production investments.

Gagauzia’s exports amount to about $80–90 million per year. But what matters more than the figure itself is the structure.

A significant portion of these exports consists of raw materials and semi-finished products: grain, sunflower seeds, and bulk wine. These are not high-value-added products. They are not strong brands. They are not processed products bearing a Moldovan or Gagauz brand name. The region sells the raw materials, while someone else turns them into finished products.
In this sense, the highway facilitates the transport of materials for others to add value to.

Gagauzia borders Ukraine’s Odessa Oblast to the south. Theoretically, this represents transit and export potential: access to Ukrainian infrastructure, historical trade ties, and proximity to the Black Sea.

The war in Ukraine has altered the logic of this direction. But a structural problem existed even before that: the region lacked sufficient logistics infrastructure capable of turning its geographical location into a competitive advantage.

The region is home to the “Valkăneşti Industrial Park” Free Enterprise Zone, which includes sites in Vulcăneşti, Comrat, and Cădîr-Lunga.

But the mere existence of a free zone does not yet turn Comrat into the industrial and logistics hub of the south. The issue is not the “free zone” sign, but whether it has become the core of the region’s industrial logic: processing, logistics, export packaging, services for the agricultural sector, and jobs.

A road becomes a tool for development only under one condition: if a production function is built around it. Processing, which requires bringing in raw materials and shipping out finished products. A logistics hub that serves the region’s export flows. Agricultural cooperatives that need roads for harvesting and delivering crops to warehouses. A university whose graduates stay in the city because there is a local industry that needs them.

If this is not the case, R34 will remain a very good road for a very efficient outflow. A comfortable artery through which the region loses what it still has.

Comrat needs more than just a good road. Comrat needs an economy around the road.

For Moldova, the conclusion is clear: true regional policy does not begin with asphalt. It begins with the answer to a simple question—why does this region need a road?

If the answer is “to get to Chisinau faster,” that is not a development strategy.

If the answer is: to connect local producers with processing facilities, warehouses with export markets, people with jobs, education with the economy, and the budget with a new tax base—then the road becomes part of development.

A region does not develop simply because a highway runs through it. A region develops when the road begins to work for it.