Documents / FOIA release
This Joint Committee Print, dated December 8, 1982, gathers studies that the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Intelligence prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. It gives estimates of Soviet gross national product for 1950 to 1980, with indexes of industrial production, agricultural production and consumption, and explains the methods and data behind them. The foreword says official Soviet statistics inflate growth and that the CIA measures offer a more accurate picture. The document contains no UFO material.
“Gross”60+ pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 Trade union and other dues were considered an element of consumption in CIA, GNP I970. They are now classified as a transfer outlay since the dues are used mainly to finance social-cultural and administra- tive activities rather than to provide services to mem- bers of the trade unions and other organizations. This change does not affect total household outlays or total GNP, but it does lower total consumption expenditures. Public-Sector Incomes Public-sector incomes have increased 6.7 billion ru- bles (table D-3). The most important changes are: (1) the addition of several charges to enterprise costs for special funds (2.1 billion rubles), (2) an increase in the miscellaneous charges component of taxes and other payments to the budget (1.6 billion rubles), (3) the deletion of the subsidy on milk products (0.8 billion rubles), and (4) the addition of trade union and other dues to transfer receipts (2.1 billion rubles). The charges to enterprise costs represent funds col- lected to support expenditures on certain components of GNP by end use (for example, science expendi- tures) which are charged to current expenses in the Soviet accounting system. The information on the number of these funds and their size, however, is sparse. The likelihood of large percentage errors in these estimates remains. The method used to estimate the miscellaneous charges component of taxes and other payments to the budget has been completely revised. Although the revised value is 1.6 billion rubles higher than in CIA, GNP I970, it actually has been reduced because we now explicitly include income earned from foreign trade. This item, 7.6 billion rubles, was previously excluded from GNP. Foreign trade income results from the differences between the domestic prices of traded goods and their equivalent foreign trade prices. We now consider the price differences to be equiva- lent to a tax or subsidy and, in agreement with Western accounting practices, include the income as a part of GNP. The subsidy on milk products was deleted because new information indicates it is netted against the value of profits reported in the Narkhoz. Trade union and other dues are now considered as a transfer payment as described above. Public-Sector Outlays Total income provides the control total for the public sector and, therefore, public-sector outlays have also risen 6.7 billion rubles (table D-4). There have been substantial structural changes in addition to the in- creased total. Expenditures for communal and admin- istrative services have decreased by 6.0 billion rubles while investment outlays increased 4.6 billion rubles and outlays n.e.c. increased 7.4 billion rubles. Expenditures on communal services (education, health, and physical culture) are estimated by a new methodology and are considerably lower than the estimates published in CIA, GNP 1970. Previously we used Narkhoz data relating to expenditures on sum- mary groups of services from the budget and other sources. Because of many ambiguities in these data and the discovery that they include imputed deprecia- tion charges of unknown size, we now estimate expen- ditures for communal services as the sum of wages, social insurance, and other current outlays. In addi- tion, expenditures for art have been deleted because they already were included with recreation expendi- tures, and expenditures for physical culture were reduced to account for the trade union subsidy on resort passes. Expenditures for government administrative services have been reduced by 0.9 billion rubles. Most of this amount is the result of a decision to lower the share of other current outlays in total expenditures from one- third to one-fourth. Investment expenditures have been increased by 4.6 billion rubles. The primary changes are the addition of an estimate for the acquisition of equipment by 126 Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 399 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.