Russia Refused to Increase Export Permit Quotas for Moldovan Transporters

Russia has set 15,000 export permits for Moldovan transport operators for 2019, which 3,000 permits less than in 2018. The press release of the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure notes that given the insufficient number of such permits, several requests were sent to the Russian side asking to increase the quota, most of which were rejected, ipn.md reports “Only in August, the Russian side agreed to organize a meeting of the Mixed Moldovan-Russian Commission on International Road Transport and, upon a request for additional permits, it noted that 80.8% of the volume of bilateral transportation is carried out by Moldavian transport operators, the share of Russian operators is only 9.3%,” the message says. According to the cited source, the Russian side noted the need for measures to increase the participation of Russian transport operators in road freight transportation between countries. “However, as a result of the negotiations, as well as taking into account the planned measures, the Russian side accepted in the third quarter of this year a proposal to provide an additional 1250 permits,” the press release said. The Russian side will receive the decision to provide other additional contingents for 2019 after monitoring the participation of Russian transporters in the Moldovan-Russian market of bilateral freight transport services, but no later than October 15 this year. “At present, the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure has repeatedly requested to issue an additional quota of permits – 7000, for operators of the Republic of Moldova, and a meeting with the Russian side is planned in the next period, which will also discuss the issue of permits quotas,” the statement reads. 279 transport operators received permits in September, 1214 permits were issued to them. 380 permits were issued to 182 operators from October 1 to October 17. Point