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.
“V.M.”23 pages
Summary Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 An Index of Industrial Production in the USSR Measures of industrial production are needed to gauge the pace of Soviet economic development and to calculate more general measures of economic activity such as Gross National Product. Because the official index is believed to have an upward bias, synthetic indexes of industrial production (SPIOER) have been constructed by the CIA to avoid the pitfalls of the of- ficial indexes. The indexes provide an empirical picture of Soviet industrial development since 1950 (figure 1). Industry recorded impressive growth in the fifties as the Soviet economy rebuilt from World War II by rapidly boosting output in the machinery and construction materials branches. Beginning in 1960 the growth rate of industrial production declined precipitously, stabilizing at a slower rate before a new period of declining growth rates began in the mid-1970s. Average Growth of Industrial Production Average Annual Percent SPIOER Official M If *1 I951-59 9.4 12.0 1960-75 6.3 8.2 _ 1976-80 3.4 4.4 SPIOER indexes are based on a sample of three types of Soviet reporting: physical output series, constant value series, and official indexes of gross output.‘ Physical output series, when available, are preferred because they avoid the distortions of disguised inflation. The products included in the index sample are classified by input-output sector and aggregated using 1 July 1967 price weights. ‘ Gross output is the value of production of an economic unit, such as an enterprise, ministry, branch, or all industry. In general, gross output represents shipments from the enterprise adjusted by inventory changes. 175 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.