Serbia plans to introduce countermeasures against Macedonia over hampered imports of flour, if the two sides fail to find a solution on March 7, media reported.

The problem emerged after the Macedonian government adopted new regulations on imports of flour from Serbia, which foresee applying control labels and quality checks following the import, rather than prior to the delivery of the flour to Macedonia.

Serbia annually exports around 30,000-40,000 tonnes of flour to Macedonia.

Serbian Minister of Trade Rasim Ljajic is expected to arrive in Skopje on March 7 to discuss the issue with Macedonian Agriculture Minister Ljupco Nikolovski, news agency MIA reported. If no solution is found, Serbia will introduce the counter-measures.

“We cannot wait anymore as there is no readiness on the Macedonian side to solve the problem,” Ljajic told Serbian daily Danas, MIA reported earlier on March 6.

Officials from the farm ministry in Macedonia say that the new regulation is aimed at guaranteeing the safety and quality of imported flour and that the changes do not imply any additional costs for importers. However, for the Serbian side, it is another barrier to their exports.

“The changes refer only to the order of steps in the entire import procedure. A novelty is that the control labels will be issued after obtaining results of the samples regarding the imported flour's quality and safety,” officials from the Macedonian ministry were cited as saying.