ural 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, b