Word: comecon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Lagging technology. This results in generally low-quality goods that are hard to sell in the West. The inability to export much makes it difficult to buy the advanced machines that could produce goods more cheaply. The debt to the West of the Comecon nations is estimated to be $54 billion. In Poland, 50% of all hard currency earned this year from exports will go to pay interest, and that kicks up price levels...
...they all described events in the Communist world last week. While President Carter met with leaders of six other industrial nations in Tokyo, the Soviet Union's Premier Aleksei Kosygin was conferring with the leaders of the ten nations in the Soviet-led Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). The chief problem: Soviet oil production, the largest in the world and chief source of COMECON supply, has fallen 23 million bbl. over five months. Actually, Soviet production was supposed to increase by 154 million bbl. this year to a total of 4.3 billion bbl. The continuing shortage, which...
Viet Nam's tilt toward Moscow became conspicuous in 1978. Hanoi first joined COMECON, the Soviet-bloc economic organization, then signed a 25-year treaty of friendship and cooperation with Moscow in November. The dramatic new Soviet military role in Indochina surfaced in February, when China invaded Viet Nam. Once proud of its self-reliant mobility, Hanoi has become virtually dependent on the Soviets for logistics and aerial reconnaissance...
...estimated $14 billion in aid over the past two decades?abruptly cut off 21 current assistance projects. In June, as the last Chinese aid technicians went home, Hanoi yielded to longstanding Soviet blandishments and formally jumped into Moscow's economic orbit as a member of the Communist trade alliance, COMECON...
...that, some Western financiers in recent weeks have begun to express discreet concern about Comecon's mounting pile of debt. The Basel-based Bank for International Settlements has noted that the ratio of debts to exports -which determines a country's ability to repay loans-has reached a high level in some Communist countries. Bank of America, Citibank, Chase Manhattan and Manufacturers Hanover all conspicuously took no part in a recent $250 million loan to the Soviet Union's Foreign Trade Bank. Some Western banks are also trying to raise interest rates charged to Communist borrowers. They...