Economic Accounts for Agriculture for 2004 and 2005 in separable countries of the Czech Republic

The Regional Accounts for Agriculture (RAA) are a regional-level adaptation of the Economic Accounts for Agriculture (EAA). The agricultural industry in a region covers the units (agricultural holdings) engaged in agricultural activities on the regional territory. Accounts for agriculture are compiled on the level NUTS 2 only from the year 2000 forwards for Eurostat and on the level NUTS 3 from the year 2003 forward for users in the Czech Republic. Data on the level NUTS 2 has not been published in the Czech Republic so far and data on the level NUTS 3 has been published for the second time. This publication contains the basic part - the Production Account for separable countries. Data are mentioned in the current prices and in the constant prices 2000.

Output of agricultural activities is in value statement and represents the whole final output of the agriculture sector.

The production account records transactions relating to the production process. It consists of available resources on one hand and uses of these resources on the other hand. The available resources include usable output and initial stocks. Uses are made up from intra-unit consumption, processing by producers, own final consumption, domestic sales to other agricultural units or outside of the industry, sales abroad, own-account produced fixed capital goods and final stocks.

Since the purpose of the processing is to measure, describe and analyse the formation of income from agricultural economic activity (which, in the Member States of the EU, is almost exclusively a commercial activity), it was decided to exclude units that produce solely for own final consumption, e.g. kitchen gardens and private livestock rearing. This type of “small” unit should be recorded if it is above the minimum threshold used in the survey on the structure of agricultural holdings. It should, however, be pointed out that agricultural production for own final consumption by holders whose holdings are larger than threshold must be recorded.

The output is to be valued at the basic prices according to the revised manual from the year 1997. The basic price is the price receivable by the producers from the purchaser for a unit of a good or service produced as output plus any subsidy receivable on that unit as a consequence of its production or sale minus any tax payable on that unit as a consequence of its production or sale. The final version of regional accounts for the years 2004 and 2005 was compiled in this manner. The whole production account was expressed at the basic prices.

The ESA 95 proposes two methods of compiling the RAA, the bottom-up and the top-up methods; these two methods may also be combined. The first one consists in collecting the data at the level of the units and then summing them to obtain the regional value for the different aggregates. The top-down method reconstructs the regional values by breaking down the national figure using an indicator, which reflects as closely as possible the regional distribution of the variable, in question. Both of these methods were used in our case (the first method for items 1 up to 13, the second method for items 15 and 17).

On the basis of Eurostat decision (Working Group in November 2004) data for the latest year will not be sent as final but as preliminary. The EAA 2005 contains preliminary data that is why RAA 2005 data is presented as preliminary. Results for “Praha” are quoted together with district “Středočeský”.

There have been monitored the items: 04.2/2 “Ornamental plants and flowers”, 04.2/3 “Plantations”, 12.2/3” Other animal products” and especially the item 17.1. ”Processing of agricultural products”, that is a part of “Inseparable non –agricultural secondary activities” for the first time in 2003. The data were acquired from additional data sources and from the calculated results of Farm structural survey. These activities are closely linked to agricultural production but they are not monitored separately in accounting; they cannot be distinguished from the main agricultural activity.