Bariéry efektívnosti reprodukčného procesu v agrárnom sektore Slovenskej republiky
BOUNDARIES IN THE REPRODUCTION PROCESS EFFICIENCY IN THE AGRARIAN SECTOR OF THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC

Summary/Abstract: he objective of the article was to analyze the fixed capital reproduction process in the majority of agrarian company types in the SR, to point at structural fixed capital changes of companies during the transformation period, and to evaluate processes for modernization and utilization. The SR agriculture has been in the process of transformation. Business subjects have slowly been adapted to the market environment, the agro-and-foodstuff market has reached a relative balance, but the decreased demand in agricultural raw materials has been accounted for the lower businesses’ performance, and for the lack of resources for the reproduction and modernization of the capital assets. That posed a thread to the growth of the businesses’ competitiveness during the EU entry preparation period. The capital assets of the agricultural businesses during the transformation period were hit by many changes, mainly due to production restructuring. The capital structure is slowly getting closer to the production structure and this process has been accompa-nied by a decreasing value of the tangible investment property, both in the absolute and relati-ve value per land unit/per one worker. Paradoxically we can see that labour pro-ductivity in-creased while the fixed capital in companies declined. This is because the adjustment of the capital structure in enterprises to new production structures has not been finished so far. Since in agricultural companies the fixed capital is mainly represented by one-purpose buildings and specialized mechanisms, its re-allocation to new business sub-jects is rather difficult. Due to that a decrease in the tangible investment property cannot be seen as negative, but also as an economic necessity benefiting for decreasing useless fixed costs. The whole agrarian complex needs resources for modernization and reconstruction of the tangible investment property. At the same time, the depreciation of machines and equipment has still be growing. Non-sufficient own capital and subsidies have remained to be the major resource for financing the fixed capital reconstruction. Agrarian compa-nies have not an easy access to commercial banks’ loans, because banks classify them as high risk partners. Our analyses on reproduction processes in agricultural companies are supported by information acquired from Information Lists of a set of companies which were willing to provide them and which are stored in a database of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Slovak Republic maintained by the VÚEPP in Bratislava. Economic results for 1998 were provided by 2099 business subjects operating on 81,54 % of the agricultural land in the SR. Therefore these results can be taken as significant. In some cases we have used examples from previous years.

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