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Romania Seeks to Boost Trade with Russia, China
Romania is mapping out a strategy aimed to re-gain the markets of Russia and China, its one-time main trading partners.
Ten years after the December 1989 Event, Romania should abandon its "East complex," chairman of the Senate's Foreign Policy Committee Gheorghi Prisacaru is quoted by Tuesday's Curentul daily as saying.
In 1989, Romanian trade with the ex-Soviet Union stood at US$5.17 billion, of which exports amounted to US$2.45 billion. The trade volume declined in 1990's, standing at US$1.21 billion by the end of 2000; of this, Romanian exports were less than US$90 million.
Romania's trade with China followed a similar trend. Last year' s bilateral trade stood at around US$258.7 million, representing only 36.7 percent of 1989 levels; Romanian exports to China in 2000 were worth US$85 million and imports US$173.7 million.
Prime Minister Adrian Nastase has recently met with a visiting delegation of the Chinese Communist Party's Foreign Relations Department. Projects currently under way and opportunities for boosting cooperation will be tackled by the Romanian-Chinese joint committee at a meeting in Bucharest this weekend.
"Romania's majority foreign trade is already represented by exchanges with the European Union, but we have to take into account that a range of products such as tractors, clothing, furniture, foodstuffs and chemical produce are demanded on the Russian and Chinese markets as well as on markets in the Middle East and northern Africa,'' Prisacaru said.
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