INTERNAL COMPETITIVENESS EROSION OF THE ROMANIAN AGRI-FOOD SECTOR EROSION “CATALYZED” BY THE ECONOMIC-FINANCIAL CRISIS

The paper starts from the theoretical premise that the business environment of the operators from the agri-food economy is, greater influenced by the behaviour of certain essential macro-economic variables of the market economies. For this purpose, our methodological approach investigates the behaviour of six macro-economic variables (GDP, prices, inflation, exchange rate, budget and credit) during time periods for which relevant statistical data are available. Starting from the incidence of economic macro-variables upon the agri-food sector, a series of factors are identified and quantified that generated a strong erosion of farmers’ incomes (relative instability of production and real prices and the “aggressiveness” of real prices of non-agricultural inputs).