KOMPARACIA VYKONNOSTI SLOVENSKEHO POLNOHOSPODARSTVA

The efficiency of the Slovak agriculture, when compared with the EU and CEFTA countries, is influenced by a number of factors. Their importance is varied since it is determined especially by the level of development of a particular national economy. In Slovakia, the 1996 GDP per capita reached only 45 per cent of the average GDP in the EU countries. Other factors include the agricultural trade deficit, constantly low investment of foreign capital into agriculture as well as high level of technical and economic obsolence of agricultural property. Despite the fact that Slovak agriculture has preserved its large scale production character, with the average size of an enterprise being 1 600 ha of land, its current efficiency parameters fall behind not only the EU level, but the potential efficiency level of the production factors as well. The 1996 agricultural production reached not more than 95 per cent of the pre-transformational level - both in the animal and plant production parameters. Despite the fact that there has been a decrese of the number of agricultural employees, they still represent a higher percentage (6,7 per cent) of the total countrys employment than in the EU countries (5,2 per cent). As far as the support of domestic producers is concerned, the subsidies represent 70 - 80% of the Uruguay Round of GATT subsidizing policy. If compared with the EU, there are also differences in the Producer Subsidy Equivalent which is the subject of discussions in spite of the fact that it reaches only 50 per cent of the EU level. The future direction of the subsidy policy is also discussed