Word: barter
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Unlike the U.S., the Iron Curtain countries almost never make outright grants of money; instead, they specialize in barter deals and in loans payable at a modest 2½% to 3% over periods ranging up to 30 years. They have avoided demanding any overt political pledge, are ostensibly content to establish economic beachheads in country and government while demonstrating their respectability. The results, as observed by TIME correspondents around the world...
EGYPT. The $250 million barter deal that the Soviets negotiated with Nasser in September 1955 has cost Egypt dearly. What Egypt got was Czech arms-many of which were captured by the Israelis-plus such items as crude oil of such a high sulphur content that it damaged Egypt's refineries, and newsprint so coarse that it tore up Cairo's high-speed Western presses. In return. Nasser gave the Soviets a long-term mortgage on Egypt's cotton crop, the nation's No. 1 source of income. The Soviets started off by reselling Egypt...
BURMA. A five-year agreement to barter rice for Soviet-bloc cement, signed in July 1955, has proved disillusioning. The cement, for which Burma had only limited use, arrived during the monsoon and hardened on the docks. The Soviets turned around and sold the rice for cash in other Asian countries, thereby depriving Burma of potential export markets. Under another 1955 agreement, Russia is to "give" Burma $28 million worth of building materials and technical help toward construction of a hospital, a technological institute, a hotel, a sports arena and an exhibition hall. The agreement requires Burma, as a token...
...they build must be state property, Russian negotiators are often more in tune with the vaguely socialist ideology of most Afro-Asians than are U.S. aid administrators in their attempts to promote free enterprise. Needing raw materials and food that the underdeveloped countries produce, the Russians can profitably make barter deals that the U.S. has no use for. Their apparent aim is to achieve a reputation for disinterestedness, their hope that eventually the underdeveloped countries will look to them for leadership and help. The economic bridgeheads, once established, can be expanded into an economic dependence that can eventually bind...
Indonesia's new ruling triumvirate had other problems. In Sumatra, Borneo and the Celebes, anti-Sukarno army colonels have long been conducting their own barter trade direct with foreign countries. The military commanders have been levying their own taxes, building their own roads and schools for nearly two years. In Singapore the colonels dealt through a foreign trade mission they had appointed themselves, over the head of the central government in Djakarta...