Coordinates of rural development in 20 villages in the southern part of county arges

Abstract

The present study analyses the situation of a cluster constituted from 20 villages in the southern part of county Arges, from the perspective of local budget coordinates and of the ongoing local development projects. From structural viewpoint, the social and economic characteristics of the analysed villages are circumscribed, according to several aspects, to the general coordinates of the Romanian rural area. The goal of the paper is to explore the different experiences that local authorities gathered in the last years of unfolding development projects with national or European funding. The analysed data are public data, gathered from official statistics, and reports delivered by various institutions. The main conclusions of the analysis show that the differences between localities regarding the coordinates of local budgets and the implementation of development programmes are significant, even at micro-regional level, when villages of the same geographic area are analysed. The involvement of local authorities in accessing funds intended for local development is the element which makes, very often, the difference between prosperous villages and the ones with development deficit. The analyses in this paper support this differentiation based on the various experiences recorded among local administrations.