1.1 Investment: Concept and types

To carry out the sub-activities, the company needs a set of elements or factors of production. For the manufacture of new products is necessary to purchase machines, buildings, transport elements, raw materials, labor, energy, etc.

The company you get the resources you need in the capital market. Families, businesses, and the State actuanos as suppliers of capital.

Thanks to the savings of the different economic agents, companies can get the resources they need to carry out their investments and with them, they can choose to get a few benefits. Therefore, there has to be investment savings.

There have been many definitions of investment, but perhaps the most comprehensive and accurate is the expressed by Pierre Massé:

To learn more about this definition we will use an example: the case of a company that invests a certain amount of money in the purchase of a machine. The act of buying the machine means giving up, for example, to pay supplier invoices on the spot, but the company expects to achieve with the machine revenues in excess of the amount invested.

In short, an investment is the acquisition of goods that serve, not to be consumed in the moment, but to produce other goods or services that will be the intended for final consumption in the future.

As well, when you make an investment in a given moment surrendering to consume in that period by the amount of the same investment. The intention is to retrieve in the future an amount greater than the upside down.

The company is the economic agent par excellence that makes investments; all it acquires the company represents an investment since their intention is to recover the disbursement made and, in addition, a positive return or benefit. The investment of enterprises enables economic growth.