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ABSTRACT
The world wine market has developed in the last years, since the traditional European producers as France, Italy and Spain face challenges from new competitors as United States, Argentina, Australia, China or South Africa. The paper evaluates the Romanian wine market within European and World context. Romania is an important player on European Union market both in terms of production and consumption of wine. The paper documentation is based on national and international statistic and the method of research was related with quantitative determinations. In terms of wine trade, Romania is a net importer country, and relating this with the low price level of Romanian wines, this can lead to questions regarding competitiveness of Romanian wine sector.
KEYWORDS
Wine market, trends, vineyards, Romania
INTRODUCTION
Recent evolution indicates a decrease of world wine consumption in 2013 and a wine production below average in the south part of the world. While the United States started to be the biggest internal market in the world in terms of volume, Romania is noticed, besides Argentina, Chile, Brazil and South Africa as a country with an important positive trend in wine consumption, in a period of time when traditional consumer countries as France, Italy and Spain are recording a decline in wine consumption. Even if the European Union is a leading producer of wine, the vine area declined in the last years, being affected b y the implementation of the new Common Market Organization based on measures supporting voluntary withdrawal from vine growing. The Romanian wine sector has only few companies that are competitive both on internal and external markets. The negative balance for wine trade reflects the low level of competitiveness of this sector, if we measure and consider the competitiveness only in terms of foreign trade performance. The Romanian wine sector has been affected in the last years by decrease of areas under vineyards, but the loss in terms of quantities was offset in quality terms through increase of noble vineyard. The wine sector is supported b y national programs. For the period 2009-2013 all the funds have been absorbed, and for the next 4 years the wine sector can benefit from a substantial allocation of 47.7 million euros per year, from European Union, covering the...