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
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 Table 9 Comparison of CIA and Soviet Official Indexes of Agricultural Production Average Annual Percentage Rates of Growth Average Absolute Percentage Difference 1951-79 1951-60 1961-70 1971-79 Soviet official 1965 prices Total 3.2 4.8 3.3 1.4 — Crops 2.8 4.1 3.3 0.8 — Livestock 3.9 6.4 3.3 2.0 — CIA-net output 1970 prices Total 3.0 4.3 3.7 0.9 .036 Crops 2.4 2.6 3.7 0.7 .013 Livestock 3.7 6.1 3.7 1.0 .074 CIA-gross output 1965 prices Total 3.2 4.6 3.6 1.2 .015 Crops 2.4 3.0 3.6 0.5 .012 Livestock 3.9 6.2 3.6 1.8 .018 livestock output. In 1979, largely as a result of the poor crop output, the share of gross output originating in the livestock sector increased relative to crops in the official Soviet index. The reconstruction of the CIA index on a gross basis with 1965 Soviet comparable prices eliminates differ- ences in growth rates for total output and livestock output for 1951-79. Growth rates do not match for intervening periods; differences are especially large for 1971-79. Furthermore, growth rates in the CIA and Soviet indexes of gross crop production remain far apart. In eliminating deductions for intrasector use of crops as a source of disparity, we discovered that the amount of deviation between the two indexes due to intrasector use is evidently small. Differences in sample coverage probably are responsible for much of the remaining difference between the two indexes. Average absolute percentage difference calculations reveal that despite occasional large differences in growth rates, the reconstructed CIA index of gross crop output is very close to the Soviet index. Although growth rate comparisons suggest more correspon- dence between the Soviet and CIA reconstructed livestock indexes, average annual difference calcula- tions indicate that trends in these indexes vary more than those in the crop indexes. However, on average, the CIA reconstructed gross output indexes of crops, livestock, and total output differ from the official index by less than 2 percent which is not material. Although the reconstruction of the CIA index on a gross basis reduced the average absolute percentage difference to 1.5 percent, the disparity in the weights for crops and livestock in total output increased. Eliminating the deduction of livestock feed from livestock production in the CIA index did not improve the correspondence between CIA and Soviet weights except for 1950. We attempted to eliminate some of the discrepancy by adding a rough estimate of the value of hay and green feed produced to crop output. As a result the share of crops rose from 46 to 47 percent. p The shift to 1965 comparable prices caused growth of livestock output in the CIA index to accelerate sharp- ly in periods before 1960. Total output grows more slowly than the Soviet official measure, however. 280 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.