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Economic accounts for agriculture (aact)

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National Reference Metadata in Euro SDMX Metadata Structure (ESMS)

Compiling agency: National Statistical Institute

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The Economic Accounts for Agriculture (EAA) are satellite accounts of the National Accounts, which provide complementary information and use concepts specially adapted to the specific nature of the sector. The architecture of the accounts consists of three accounts for current operations - "Production Account", "Generation of income Account", "Entrepreneurial income Account" and one account for accumulation - "Capital Account" as their consistency and completeness is provided in accordance with ESA '2010. The data on satellite economic accounts are developed under the basic methodology of Eurostat, published in the "Manual on the economic Accounts for Agriculture and Forestry EAA / EAF". Their main purpose is to provide baseline information for the development of the Gross Domestic Product, and in particular the contribution of the sector "Agriculture" in the national economy. Secondly, they are intended to measure the level of income of the agricultural holdings and to reflect trends in it over the years.

6 March 2024

A detailed methodology can be found in Annex I of Regulation (EC) 138/2004.

The EAA are satellite accounts of the European System of Accounts (ESA) providing complementary information and concepts adapted to the particular nature of the agricultural industry.

The EAA are shown as a sequence of inter-related accounts. As the EAA are based on the industry concept, the sequence of accounts is limited to the first accounts of the current account:

- the production account and

- the generation-of-income account

whose balancing items are value added and operating surplus, respectively.

Nevertheless, it should be possible to compile other accounts, at least in part, in so far as the relevant flows can be clearly attributed to them. The accounts in question are the following:

- the entrepreneurial income account (one of the current accounts) and

- the capital account (one of the accumulation accounts).

The EAA provide a wide range of indicators on the economic activities in the agricultural sector: these include output, intermediate consumption, gross and net value added, gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), both in current prices and in constant prices, as well as compensation of employees, other taxes and subsidies on production, net operating surplus or net mixed income, property income and net entrepreneurial income in current prices.

Three indicators of the economic performance of agriculture are defined in the EAA:

•Indicator A: Index of the real income of factors in agricultural per annual work unit.           
•Indicator B: Index of real net agricultural entrepreneurial income per unpaid annual work unit.          
•Indicator C: Net entrepreneurial income of agriculture.

The overall unit is the agricultural sector. However, in order to provide more detailed information and to analyse flows generated by the production process and the use of goods and services, it is necessary to select units which emphasise relationships of a technical-economic kind. This means that, as a rule, institutional units must be broken-down into smaller and more homogeneous units with regard to the kind of production (local kind-of-activity units/local KAUs) are intended to meet this requirement (ESA 2010, 2.147).

The local KAU is defined as the part of a KAU which corresponds to a local unit. The institutional unit's information system must be capable of indicating or calculating for each local KAU at least the value of output, intermediate consumption, compensation of employees, the operating surplus and employment and gross fixed capital formation (ESA 2010, 2.148).

The agricultural holding, (the unit currently used for statistical studies of agriculture (censuses, surveys of the structure of agricultural holdings), is the local KAU most appropriate to the agricultural industry (even though certain other units, such as wine or olive oil cooperatives, or units performing contract work, etc., have to be included in it). Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that the variety of agricultural activities that can be performed on agricultural holdings makes them a special type of local KAU. The strict application of the ESA rule to units and their group should in fact result in a division of the agricultural holding into several separate local KAUs in cases where several activities of the NACE Rev. 2 four-digit class are performed on the same holding.

Although the ESA gives pre-eminence to local KAUs, the unit best suited to analyse the production process is the unit of homogeneous production (UHP). This unit is used to analyse inputs and outputs, since it corresponds exactly to a type of activity. Institutional units are thus divided into as many UHPs as there are activities (other than ancillary). By grouping these units of homogeneous production it is possible to break down the economy into 'pure' (homogeneous) branches. A UHP cannot, as a rule, be directly observed. Therefore, the accounts of homogeneous branches cannot be compiled on the basis of groups of UHPs. The ESA describes a method for compiling these accounts.

The use of the local KAU as the basic unit for the agricultural industry entails recording non-agricultural secondary activities where they cannot be distinguished from the main agricultural activity (inseparable non-agricultural secondary activities of local agricultural KAUs) The selection criterion for inseparable non-agricultural secondary activities is rather the type of activity than the nature of the product. For example, agro-tourism services provided by a farm must only be included if they cannot be separated from its agricultural activities.

Bulgaria (NUTS 0);
6 statistical regions (NUTS2)
2020 calendar year

Accuracy/quality of data are closely linked to the quality of information produced within the surveys/administrative sources used for data compilation.

Accounts data are given in millions of national currency.

Agricultural labour input data are given in thousands of annual work units (AWU).

 

The description for data compilation is as follows:

See the detail below.

Statistical information for this indicator is published three times in the year:

· first estimate for the year - in December of the current year;

· second estimate for the year - in February of the next year;

· preliminary data for the year - in October of the next year. In October data at statistical region level (NUTS2) are published

The data are submitted as follows:

. First estimate - data are sent to Eurostat by 30 November of the current year and are published 20 days after the deadline of submission;

. Second estimate - data are sent to Eurostat by 31 January of the following year and published within 20 days after the deadline of submission;

. Preliminary data - data are sent to Eurostat by 30 September of the following year and published 20 days after the deadline of submission;

· Final data - data are sent to Eurostat by September 30 two years after the year to which they relate and shall be published within 20 days after the deadline of submission.

Data are geographically comparable for the entire period for which they are available (since 1995).

Data are comparable over time for the entire period since 1999.