business activity

The Latin term activities led to activity, a concept that in our language can be used to name an action or a function that a subject or an institution develops. Business, for its part, is an adjective that refers to what is linked to a business (an organization that carries out commercial or industrial tasks for profit).

It is known as business activity, therefore, to the actions that a company develops to obtain Profits. Business activities are very diverse and depend on the characteristics of each organization.

In its broadest sense, business activities are all those activities carried out by a company with the objective of produce and market the goods or services that allow you to generate income. In this sense, the tasks it performs internally to manage its capital and to organize material and human resources are also part of business activities.

Take the case of a company that markets canned fish. Its business activities include catching fish, cold storage, processing, packaging and finally its distribution. All these processes are essential for the preserves to reach consumers through markets, stores, etc. If we focus on the economic activity of this company, we could say that it performs a secondary economic activity (You not only get the raw material, but also process it.) Due to the type of activities carried out, on the other hand, the company belongs to the fishing industry.

Since there is no rigid definition of this concept, to further explore its scope we will focus on an article on the Law of income tax of Mexico, where business activity is defined as the set of actions that generate income, and it includes agricultural, industrial, forestry (the forestry is the cultivation of mountains or forests) and livestock, in addition to the aforementioned fishing.

In this same article six examples are listed, where we can understand in more detail what we should understand by business activity:

* the Commerce, in accordance with the provisions of federal laws, which give it that specific character and distinguish it from the activities mentioned below;

* any industrial activity that focuses on the conservation, transformation or extraction of raw materials, the elaboration and finishing of articles for their subsequent commercialization;

* the sowing, cultivation and harvest, as well as the first disposal of all the products obtained in said processes, provided that they are not subjected to any type of industrial alteration;

* all livestock activity, that is, the raising of animals that humans exploit for food and clothing, for example, such as cows, sheep, goats and poultry. As in the case of agriculture, for livestock to be considered a business activity, it must include the entire process up to before the point at which industrial transformations begin;

* fishing, which also includes control of the reproduction of those species necessary for trade, through various measures;

* silvicultural activity. At this point we must also include the breeding, restoration and conservation of mountains and forests, as well as any movement that encourages such actions.

As can be seen, a common feature of several of the activities that we can consider of a business nature is that they do not include any type of transformation Instead, they focus on obtaining the raw material, or on the different steps necessary to prevent the environment in which it is extracted from deteriorating and continuing to proliferate.