Desenvolvimento do protótipo avançado de um sistema de apoio à formulação e avaliação de Projetos agroindustriais

Abstract

Agroindustrial projects are a strategic component of rural development efforts in Brazil. With the objective of providing computerized support to the process of preparing and evaluating such projects, an advanced system prototype was developed. The system simplifies the cumbersome process of data analysis involved in the financial computations associated with project formulation and evaluation. The advanced prototype developed was named SAFPRO-Agro, a Portuguese acronym for Support System for the Formulation of Agroindustrial Projects. It utilizes information supplied by users to automatically build investment and cost tables, plus revenue estimates and cash flows. Feasibility indicators, such as net present value, internal rate of return, pay-back period and break-even point are also computed. Users are guided through the formulation process in a stepwise fashion, which follows the typical procedures of agroindustrial investment analysis. Once all the needed information is entered, the system generates the financial tables, which can be saved or printed. Saved runs can be later accessed and modified interactively, thus allowing the performance of what-if analyses. SAFPRO-Agro constitutes an important tool for professionals involved in agroindustrial development. It greatly reduces the amount of time spent in the computations and contributes to the standardization of the formulation and evaluation procedures, a desirable feature for development banks and other lenders.