Carrefour: Our imports will surge in 2007

Carrefour Romania, the biggest domestic hypermarket chain, is expecting EU integration, in order to increase its imports of consumer goods, as well as of imports of electronics and home appliances. “We will be looking to take advantage of the forthcoming accession and increase imports. Currently we have about 55,000 products listed in our stores. After accession, we will stock over 60,000 products, with imported products set to generate most of the growth,” said Andreea Mihai, marketing manager of Carrefour Romania. She also specified that products imported directly by Carrefour could be cheaper than products supplied by Romanian suppliers, due to the negotiating power that the Carrefour group has at an international level. French group Carrefour owns several regional acquisition centres in Europe. Once custom duties have been dropped in 2007, prices for products such as wine (60% customs duties at the moment), cheese (45% tax for imports from the EU) and certain chocolate products, (40% tax for imports from the EU) will be affected drastically. Importers of food products from the Union are also expecting a boom in the number of foreign brands on the Romanian market, once customs duties have been abolished.