Despite strong economic growth since2000, Moldova remains one of the poorest countries in theregion. Excessive reliance on remittances, export dependencyon a few products, and insufficient domestic job creationmake the Moldovan economy highly vulnerable to externalconditions. As a small and open economy, Moldova’sdevelopment potential is linked to its trade and investmentintegration strategy. Moldova is situated between two largemarkets: the European Union (EU), which absorbs more thanhalf of Moldova’s exports, and the Russian Federation.Reducing the economic distance to large regional markets andreaping the benefits of openness is key to overcomingMoldova's structural constraints and spurringexport-led growth. The objective of the Moldova Trade Studyis to contribute to a better understanding of the factorsand challenges underlying Moldova’s foreign tradeperformance and to identify policy interventions that canenhance the competitiveness of Moldova’s exporting firms andthe value added of their exports. . The rest of the note isstructured as follows: (ii) section two summarizes theanalysis of Moldova’s export performance; (iii) sectionthree focuses on constraints on Moldova’s competitiveness;(iv) in section four, the authors consider alternative tradepolicy scenarios and their implications for the Moldovaneconomy; (v) section five synthetizes existing analysis onconstraints for agriculture competitiveness and exports,while section six evaluates the performance of free economiczones in Moldova. In the final section, the authors presentpolicy recommendations
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