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 Description and Evaluation of Component Indexes Goods The index of goods is the weighted sum of three category indexes—food, soft goods, and durables and miscellaneous goods. The weights are expenditures on the three categories in 1970, derived as explained in detail in CIA, GNP 1970 and in Appendix D of JEC, GNP, 1950-80. The weights for sub-indexes of the three major category indexes are consistent in concept and method of derivation with the major category weights. All weights are shown in ruble values or percentages in Appendix A, along with the indexes. Food, Beverages, and Tobacco Scope and Coverage. The category Food, Beverages and Tobacco comprises (1) household purchases of these items in state and cooperative retail outlets and in collective farm markets, including purchases in restaurants and canteens (2) household consumption in kind of food products, obtained mainly from private farming and (3) military subsistence. The concept coincides with the category “Food and Tobacco" in the personal consumption expenditures in US national accounts. Although the index is a sample index, it covers 94.4 percent of estimated total consumption of the relevant products. Only minor food items, such as salt, spices, and condiments, are not included; all important alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages, ex- cept kvass and coffee, and all tobacco products are included. The composite index is a weighted aggregate of 18 sub-indexes~l 5 for foods, two for beverages and one for tobacco. The weights for the sub-indexes represent expenditures in 1970 prices derived to be consistent in concept with the weights for the category as a whole. The weights for the sub-indexes are considered rea- sonably reliable. The sub-indexes are based on phys- ical quantity series except for the indexes for macaro- ni and for tobacco, which represent deflated retail sales. indexes and weights are shown in Appendix A. Table A-l; underlying data and sources are given in Appendix B. Ten sub-indexes for food products, with 63 percent of the weight, are based on official data on per capita consumption of these products in kilograms or phys- ical units. The consumption data, which have been published regularly since I965,“ are based on a variety of sources, principally on balances of the supply and uses of agricultural products and on periodic family budget surveys. While the latter have been criticized for lack of representativeness, the results they give, according to Soviet statements, are checked against availabilities given by the product balances. Although the absolute levels in any one year must be used with great care in international com- parisons (because of definitional problems), the data are considered reliable in trend. They are reasonably consistent with statistics for production, intermediate uses, changes in inventories, and net imports. The present approach to constructing the food index uses all of the per capita consumption series that are published and replaces an extremely complex method- ology used earlier.“ That approach relied on produc- tion data, with numerous adjustments and estimates being required to fill in gaps in information. The physical consumption data are believed to provide an improved measure of year-to-year changes in con- sumption, compared with the production-based series. Four sub-indexes for food products and the two sub- indexes for beverages with a total weight of 34 percent are based on physical production data, adjust- ed where possible for inventory change, net imports, and quality changes. Data availabilities constrained the extent of such adjustments. Such lacunae, along with gaps in the series of data on per capita consump- tion, reduce the reliability of the sub-indexes, espe- cially with respect to year-to-year changes. The two sub-indexes based on deflated retail sales (3 percent ofthe total weight) employ official retail price indexes as deflators; these indexes probably are not seriously in error for the two products concerned (macaroni and tobacco). They do take account of changes in quality and mix, however. Although such changes are not reflected in the series based on consumption in physical units, this failure is probably not too serious in the case of most food produicts. ‘° The method of calculating the physical measures of per capita consumption is described in Vest xlal. No. 2, I968, pp. 46-50. " This methodology was used to construct the index that was published in JEC, I976, pp. 64l-650 and in all versions published earlier. 337 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.