Sugar Business Owners' Association: With just four sugar plants we're import dependent

Domestic sugar producers say Romania is helplessly seeing sugar prices rise internationally, while being dependent on European imports.
Internationally, sugar prices hit the highest level of the past three decades, rising by 46% in the past year alone, to 0.71 dollars (0.51 euros), according to IMF data.
Ioan Armenean, chairman of Romania's Sugar Business Owners' Association, says domestic production is two times lower than demand, which amounts to 550,000 tonnes, because there are just four sugar plants left out of the 33 that operated 20 years ago. "We depend on bourse quote. The price is made in New York, London or Paris," Armenean says.
Dan Popovici, a manager with Lemarco Romanian-US-held sugar producer, one of the main players on the market, with turnover worth 370m lei (88m euros) in 2009, is of the same opinion.
In Romania, the sugar market is valued at 275m euros, according to ZF data.