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 the share allocated to consumption has decreased by 7 percentage points. The only other country to have a similar change in output-use patterns is Japan, where investment has risen from 15 to 33 percent of GDP, while private consumption has fallen from 63 to 55 percent. Most of the other OECD countries show either stable patterns of distribution or shifts from private consumption to other (mostly government) expenditures. Growth in Per Capita Consumption. Table 3 com- pares the average annual growth rates of per capita consumption for selected OECD countries and the USSR. There is considerable variance among coun- tries and time periods. The USSR compares quite favorably with most OECD countries but lags well behind Japan and West Germany. Declining Soviet growth shows up clearly in the Soviet data, with the growth rate of per capita consumption falling to 1.7 percent per year in 1976-79. How Reliable Are the Synthetic Measures of Soviet Growth? The data used above to describe and interpret Soviet economic growth since 1950 are based on convention- al Western national income concepts. While they rely on published official Soviet data, they reflect numer- ous judgments about both the meaning of Soviet data and the best procedures for constructing the Western- style accounts. The reliability and sensitivity of the synthetic GNP data can be examined in terms of the: (1) sensitivity of the growth rate of GNP to the base year used, (2) patterns in the residual component of the accounts, (3) comparison with official Soviet NMP data, and (4) comparison with other Western esti- mates of Soviet GNP. Sensitivity to the Base Year Used When the prices of one year are used to measure growth over a 30-year span, growth rates in years far from the base year can be distorted because of changes in intersectoral price relationships.” As a check on the severity of this problem, current-price " Bergson concludes that the long-term decline of the Soviet GNP growth rate is understated on this account. See Abram Bergson, “Conclusions,” The USSR in the I 980s, NATO-Directorate of Economic Affairs, NATO, Brussels, 1978, pp. 231-242. 23 Table 4 Percentage Distribution of 1960 and 1976 Soviet GNP by Sector of Origin in Current and 1970 Established Prices §;»=T<§*MTm "rm 7 1976 1970 Prices 1960 Prices _ l 970 Prices 1976 Prices Industry 47.2 42.1 47.9 48.9 ' Construction 7. 1 7.3 8.0 7.9 Agriculture 17.5 25.1 16.8 16.1 _ Transportation 7 .2 5 .8 7.9 8.4 Communications 0.6 V 0.5 0.8 0.8 WW Trade 4.6 4.5 5.0 4.9 Services 13.0 12.0 11.5 ll.l Other 2.8 2.6 1.9 1.9 Sources: The data in 1970 prices are derived by using the indexes in table A-5 and the established-price weights in table D-7. The methodology is described in appendix A. See footnote 28 for the data in 1960 and 1976 prices. GNP accounts for the USSR were constructed for 1960 and 1976.“ The distribution ofGNP by sector of origin in 1960 and 1976 in current and 1970 estab- lished prices is compared in table 4.” In 1960 the primary difference is that agriculture has a lower weight in 1960 prices than in 1970 prices, a result which reflects the fact that price increases for agricul- tural output between 1960 and 1970 were greater than those for other sectors. The rates of growth of GNP obtained by using 1960, 1970, and 1976 as a base year are compared in the following tabulation: Average Annual Percent Growth of GNP Period 1960 Prices 1970 Prices 1976 Prices 1951-60 6.6 6.2 6.1 1961--70 5.5 _ 5.3 _5.2 1971-80 3.4 3.2 3.1 Z8 These accounts are not included in this report, but were constructed using the same methodology as described in this report for 1970. "’ Because of the problems inherent in using Soviet-established prices for measuring the growth of GNP (discussed in part ll) a more informative comparison would be in factor-cost prices. At this time, however, data for 1960 and 1976 in current factor-cost prices are not available. 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.