Word: comecon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...good news. Like Poland, Czechoslovakia has been hit hard by the collapse of Comecon, the economic organization of the former Soviet bloc. Exports to Russia and other once communist countries have shriveled faster than new markets can be developed in the West, and imports of Russian oil now have to be paid for in scarce hard currency. Czechoslovak production fell 16% last year; unemployment, officially zero under communism, has risen to 8% and is certain to go higher, bringing some of the same calls heard in Poland for pumping more money into sick state enterprises...
...lowest inflation (34% for all 1991, about a third of that at year's end). Hungary has been especially successful in attracting foreign investment; it has formed no fewer than 10,000 joint ventures with Western firms. The country has also developed new markets to replace those lost when Comecon collapsed; more than three-quarters of its exports go to the West...
Those days are gone with perestroika. Like its trade with the former Comecon countries of Eastern Europe, Moscow's deals with Havana are now on a hard- currency basis at prevailing world prices. Under a 1991 agreement worth $3.8 billion, the Soviet Union is to deliver 70 million bbl. of oil to Cuba and, in exchange, receive 4 million tons of sugar, plus citrus fruit, nickel and medical supplies...
...would have been impossible on such a scale. It was a question not only of raw materials but of cooperation and markets. Our economy was based on specific trading patterns within Comecon. Hundreds of enterprises were working to produce goods for the Soviet economy, goods the West would not buy because of quality or other factors. We could not switch overnight, and we still cannot do it today. Imagine the scenario had the opposition ((Solidarity)) taken over in the autumn of 1981 and inherited such an economic situation on the eve of winter, when there were already serious shortages...
Wherever they are on the paths to reform, most countries in the region stand to gain if Czechoslovakia's effort to revamp or abolish Comecon makes any headway at the organization's meeting in Sofia this week. Since intra-bloc commerce claims an average of 70% of each country's trade, replacing the noncompetitive barter system with bilateral, hard-currency agreements could free industries to turn their attention to non-Comecon nations. Historically, the Comecon system has encouraged inefficiency, low-quality production and poor planning. "It made each country in the bloc more anxious to consume than to produce," says...