THE COMPETITIVENESS OF BAKERY GRAIN MARKET IN ROMANIA AND BULGARIA – A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The bakery grain market is an important economic sector of the food industry in Romania and Bulgaria,
this product has always been part of the country's traditions. Bread and bakery products are
widely consumed in both countries, based on flour obtained from bakery grains. In 2023, the area
cultivated with cereals for the production of grain was 1,977.8 thousand hectares in Bulgaria and
5,239.8 thousand hectares in Romania and the harvested production in EU standard humidity was
10,343.5 thousand tons in Bulgaria and 24,007.9 thousand tons in Romania. Competitiveness is a
concept used often for the analysis of an agricultural sector, at the macroeconomic level, being in a
close relation with food security and international trading activity from that sector. The subject of
this study is represented by the analyze of the competitiveness of two categories of bakery grains:
wheat and rye, these two being considered the most used grains for the production of bakery products.
In this study it was compared the bakery grain market competitiveness from Romania with the
one from Bulgaria. The main indicators used for measuring competitiveness, and used also in this
study are: bread and bakery products consumption (from 2019 to 2029), sales volume per capita in
2023, area harvested with wheat and rye (from 2018 to 2022), the production of wheat and rye (from
2018 to 2022), indicators related to foreign trade (import, export and trade balance, for the period),
and Balassa Index calculated for wheat, and meslin and rye, for the last 15 years. One of the key
findings of the study is that the area harvested with wheat and rye remained constant in both countries
from 2018 to 2022. During this period, wheat production in Bulgaria increased by 8%, while it
decreased by 14% in Romania. Additionally, rye production rose by 0.1% in Bulgaria and by 23.6%
in Romania. In the case of wheat and meslin, trade balance is positive for both countries, while in
the case of rye trade balance is positive only for 2021-2023 in Bulgaria, in rest being negative for
both countries. The export of wheat and meslin on the world market provides a comparative advantage,
particularly for Bulgaria, with a Balassa index of 13.8 in 2023, and for Romania, with a
Balassa index of 8.70 in the same year. However, the Balassa index for rye indicates that neither
Romania nor Bulgaria has a comparative advantage regarding rye