Investment
In the 1960-71 period annual investment in agriculture increased from 381 million to 548 million leva, but it declined as a proportion of total investment from 28 to 15 percent. A substantial portion of the agricultural investment was used to equip new state farms established on previously collective farmlands. Investment funds were used for the construction of farm buildings, machinery repair stations, and irrigation facilities and for the acquisition of farm machinery. On the basis of cultivated acreage, state farms received more investment than collective farms, but the disproportion was gradually reduced and become quite small by 1970. In that year state farms had about 15 percent more fixed assets per acre of cultivated land than the collective farms.
With the formation of agricultural complexes discrimination in investment between the two types of farms is being eliminated along with other distinctions. Investment plans are to be uniformly based on the needs of the entire complex regardless of the former status of its constituent farms. Needs will be evaluated mainly on the basis of government programs for individual kinds of production, the availability of manpower, and the natural conditions of the farms and complexes.
Agricultural investment in the 1971-75 period was planned at about 2.7 billion leva. This sum constitutes only 13.5 percent of the total planned investment and implies the maintenance of annual agricultural investment at the level of 1970. It also reflects the continued underinvestment in agriculture in favor of industry, despite the grandiose, plans for agricultural transformation, considering that agriculture contributed 22 percent of the national income in 1970. In that year a Soviet economist observed that the small proportion of national resources allotted to agriculture in the past was responsible for the slow growth of that important economic sector and that the increase in the mechanization of farms was not sufficient to offset the loss of manpower. The leadership's policy of placing agriculture on an industrial footing and mechanizing production demands increased investment in machinery and other physical facilities. The low investment decreed for the 1971-75 period is not in keeping with that policy.
A national conference on construction in agriculture, convened in the spring of 1972, was devoted to the study of shortcomings in capital construction. The underlying causes of unsatisfactory performance were analyzed, and persons responsible for the failures were identified. The findings of the conference were not published, but an account of the conference contained references to inadequate project planning, poor design, acceptance of inferior equipment, delays in the completion of construction, and cost overruns. A sympathetic foreign observer noted a disproportionately large allocation of investment funds to building construction compared with the funds allotted for farm machinery.
Mechanization
At the beginning of 1971 Bulgarian agriculture possessed about 53,600 tractors with a total of 1.4 million horsepower—the equivalent of about sixteen horsepower per 100 acres of plowed land. The horsepower of the tractor inventory increased by 2.3 times after 1960, but a portion of that increase was offset by the loss of more than 358,000 horses and buffalo. In 1970 Bulgaria had more tractor power per acre than any other Eastern European communist country except Czechoslovakia and more horses per acre than any of these countries with the exception of Hungary, which had a slightly larger number.
Grain combines on farms numbered 9,340, or 2.4 combines for each 1,000 acres of grain crops. In this regard Bulgaria ranked above the Soviet Union and at the average of the other Eastern European communist countries. Nevertheless, according to the minister of agriculture, only about 50 percent of the labor in wheat production was mechanized in 1972, even though wheat production was considered to be the most highly mechanized branch of agriculture. In other production branches the level of mechanization was extremely low.
According to scattered Bulgarian press reports the supply of farm machinery is inadequate for the needs, unbalanced as to composition, and inferior in design and physical condition. Many of the available tractors and combines are overage and obsolete. The situation is aggravated by chronic shortages of spare parts for both domestic and imported equipment. Production of parts is inhibited by its relatively low profitability, despite incentives offered by the government.
Under the Sixth Five-Year Plan farm machinery valued at 780 million leva is to be delivered to agriculture from domestic sources and from the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON—see Glossary). This machinery is to include more powerful tractors and grain combines, milking machines, and sprinkler irrigation systems. Machinery is also to be provided for the harvesting of corn, sugar beets, cotton, rice, fruits, and vegetables and for the harvesting and processing of feed crops. Adequate information on the progress of the mechanization program during the first two years of the five-year period is not available, but there is evidence that shortages of spare parts and trained operators continued to immobilize substantial numbers of farm machines.