The Republic of Moldova is preparing a new wave of European money for the land. On 17 June, Parliament approved the opening of negotiations for 150 million euros of financing from the European Investment Bank for the “Livada Moldovei II” project. The figure is impressive. But for a farmer in Cornești or Pârlița, the question is not how much is announced in Chișinău, but how much, and how, reaches home.
What “Livada Moldovei II” is
According to Parliament’s statement, of the 150 million, about 135 would go, through banks and other intermediaries, to micro-enterprises and small and medium firms in horticulture, viticulture, animal husbandry, aquaculture and processing, as well as to irrigation and digitalisation. Another 15 million or so is earmarked for public investment — research, agricultural education, food safety. The money comes “on concessional terms”, and the Government is betting that, together with the beneficiaries’ contribution, it will trigger investment of over 300 million euros.
One thing to grasp from the outset: it is a loan, not a grant. That is, state debt, which is paid back.
What “Livada Moldovei I” left behind
The programme is not its first edition, and the first says a lot about what to expect. “Livada Moldovei I” started from an EIB credit of 120 million euros (contract signed in 2014, launched in 2016) and financed modern orchards, greenhouses, cold-storage and packing houses, irrigation systems and equipment, through nine commercial banks.
The balance sheet, however, is mixed. According to an audit by the Court of Accounts, between 2016 and 2023 some 514 sub-projects were financed, with total investment of 197.5 million euros — but only 90.4 million of the European credit was actually used, that is 75.3% of the available money. The rest went unabsorbed. Auditors also flagged questionable spending by the implementation unit, from protocol to promotion. The lesson for “Livada II”: money on paper does not automatically mean money that reaches farmers.
Where Ungheni actually stands
This is where the local part comes in — and it calls for honesty. Ungheni is not a top fruit-growing district. With 1,162 hectares of orchards in 2025 and a harvest of about 5,600 tonnes of fruit, the district yields only some 1.5% of the country’s output and ranks 15th of more than 30 districts, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The leaders are in the north — Briceni, Ocnița, Edineț. In grapes, Ungheni stands even more modestly, below the top 18 districts (the official per-district figures cover, note, only farms and farm households, not the vineyards in people’s yards).
What is more, the sector has shrunk: the area of orchards fell from a peak of 1,460 hectares in 2015 to 1,162 in 2025 — minus a fifth in a decade.
This is where the real stake lies, which is not triumphal but a question: will a massive European programme for horticulture reach a small, declining district like Ungheni too, or will it concentrate, once again, in the fruit-growing north and the wine-growing south? Because “Livada II” finances exactly what the district lacks in order to climb the value chain — cold storage, irrigation, table grapes.
The unanswered question: who got the first round
It would be useful to know how many farmers from the Ungheni district accessed “Livada Moldovei I”, so as to estimate what might follow. This, however, cannot be learned from public sources: neither the Office for the Management of External Assistance Programmes nor the Agency for Intervention and Payments in Agriculture publishes beneficiaries broken down by district. It is the same opacity we encountered in the 2026–2030 agricultural subsidies programme — the per-district figure is missing. We will request it officially.
The national fact comes from Parliament’s official statement; the data on “Livada Moldovei I” are from the Court of Accounts’ report. The agricultural figures per district are official data from the National Bureau of Statistics (territorial table AGR020900reg.px); they cover agricultural enterprises and peasant farms, not household plantations. The number of beneficiaries from the Ungheni district under the first programme is not published and will be requested officially.