Competitive Advantages and Disadvantages in Romania’s Agri-Food Trade -Trends and Challenges

The paper is part of the studies concerning trade patterns and agri-food foreign trade policies in the EU enlargement context, aiming to assess the competitive trade advantages and disadvantages of the Romania’s agri-food products in the foreign trade relations. The analysis focuses on the challenges of the trade liberalization and its influence on the intensification of the commercial exchanges, the supply diversification and on the trade balance equilibrium, faced by Romania’s agri-food sector over the transition and pre-accession period. The structural reforms of the transition and EU accession preparations induced paramount changes in Romania’s agri-food trade pattern, i.e. a fluctuating evolution of the agri-food foreign trade, either in correlation with the variations in the agricultural supply, the performance deficiencies of the agri-food sector that provoked disequilibria on the export market, or with the effect of political changes upon the trade flows. The recent integration in the Single Market recalls a special attention on the opportunities for the competitive producers to attract benefits offered by the enlarged access possibilities and the openness to third countries. In this context, an in-depth analysis of the bilateral trade relation between Romania and EU has been performed by using an alternative method of the comparative trade advantage index, based on the one developed by Vollrath [1]. The results emphasize the identification of either the competitive agri-food trade potential, or of the sensitive zones that could be affected by the external competition post-accession, as well as the needed improvements in the Romanian agri-food sector’s competitiveness.