Chisinau, February 7 (Infotag). The 15th international annual wine exhibition ExpoVin Moldova 2006, to be held on February 22-25, is going to be attended by the biggest number of participants ever – 180 companies, its organizer, Poliproject Exhibitions Co., says.

Company Director General Arcadie Andronic told a news conference in Infotag today that for the first time ever, the organizer has come to face an unusual problem: approximately 20% of the companies, which have applied for participation too late, have actually no room to unfold their products. All pavilions allotted for the ExpoVin are already full.

Andronic said, a way out of such an embarrassing situation could be the urgent construction of a new pavilion, “but this should be done by the State, like it is practiced in the rest of the world, not by the exhibition organizers. The thing is, organizers receive only 2-of-10 euros earned during every exhibition, and the rest 8 euros go to the State Budget”.

Of all the above-mentioned participants, there will be only 50 Moldovan companies, and the rest are foreign ones. Forty percent of them are wine producers, 30% -- equipment manufacturers, and the rest specialize in packaging, seedling business, and other.

The exhibition program features a wine tasting competition, at which nearly 3 hundred products from almost 50 countries will be presented.

Poliproject Exhibitions has in its plans to organize the next year’s ExpoVin Moldova not in Chisinau but in Moscow in April 2007, and to invite all the 2006 participants to the Russian capital.

In 2005, Moldova exported $313 million worth of wines – up $38 million against 2004.