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 Transportation. Scope and Coverage. The index of transportation is a measure of passenger transporta- tion services in real terms. It is a weighted composite of physical series for 9 modes of transport—rail, sea, river, bus, air, tram, trolleybus, subway, and taxi. The coverage of the index is complete.” Both the weights and the physical series are based on officially pub- lished data, and little interpolation or estimation was required. The component indexes use quantitative indicators, mainly passenger kilometers and number of passengers. Quality change does not seem to be a serious problem in this sector although the basic equipment has been modernized over the years, thus probably making transportation physically more com- fortable. However, the degree of crowding likely has not been much reduced. In the US, transportation services as a component of personal consumption in the national accounts are measured by current expenditures deflated by BLS price indexes. Annual expenditure data are not avail- able for the USSR. According to Soviet statements, fares for the various types of passenger transport have not been changed for decades, except for air and taxi fares in the late 1970s. Weights. The weights used to aggregate the 9 sub- indexes are average revenue rates per passenger kilo- meter, per kilometer or per ride. The weights and their sources are as follows: Mode Average Rate Source (kopecks) 0.87 per pass. km.Eail Sea Transport i svyaz', 1972, p. 111. Ibid., p. 151.7.46 per pass. mile 1.48 per pass. km. Ibid., p. 186.River l}P§._a. 1.31 per pass. km. Ibid., p. 241. Air 1.74 per pass. km. N.N . Belenkiy, Ekonomika passazhirskiklrperevozok, 1974, p. 241, with a 25 percent profit markup added. 3.0 per ride N. B. Chestniy, Tarify na kom- munaI'nyye usIugi,1968, p. 19. 4.0 per ride Ibid. 5.0 per ride A. G. Kreykin (ed.), Passazhirs- kiye tarify no transport SSSR, 1966, p. 19 1 1.50 per km. Transport i svyaz', 1972, pp. 247-54. Tram Trolleybus Subway Taxi ” Although the index eovers all passenger transportation—_ both private and business—the 1970 expenditure weight excludes esti- mated business travel outlays. Thus, their share in total outlays is assumed to remain constant. Index. The nature and sources of data for the sub- indexes are summarized below: Mode “Physical Measure Sources? Rail, river, bus, Passenger km Transport i svyaz ', 1972, air p. 19, and similar table in Narkhozy in subsequent years. Sea Passenger miles Transport i svyaz', 1972, p. 139 and similar tables in Narkhozy for subsequent years. f Tram, trolley- Passengers bus, subway Transport i svyaz ', 1972, pp. 256-57 and similar tables in Narkhozy for other years. _ V__v _ Taxi Passenger km. Transport I svyaz', 1957, pp. 256-57; Transport i svyaz', 1972, pp. 246-47; similar tables in Narkhozy for other years. Communications. Scope and Coverage. Soviet statisti- cal practice defines the sector to include the postal services, telephone system, telegraph system, radio and television broadcasting, and miscellaneous special services." The index for the sector is a composite of four physical output series for the major forms of communications——postal, telegraph, telephone, and radio and television; the four series are aggregated with 1970 average revenue (implicit unit price) weights. The coverage of the index evidently is quite complete, only “miscellaneous services” being omit- ted. The sum of the revenues for the four types included in the index comprised 98 percent of the total reported revenue (Transport i svyaz’, 1972, p. 302). The data used for revenue weights and indexes refer to total activity of the sector, i.e., services rendered to business firms and government, as well as to private persons. There are no data by type of customers; evidence that the household share has been relatively stable is provided by a comparison of household expenditures on communications in 1960, 1965, 1970 and 1972 " with the total value of output of communi- cations in those years.” The household percentage shares are respectively: 38.5, 40.0, 33.3 and 34.2. " Metodicheskiye ukazaniya, 1974, pp. 755-756. ” I.M. Schneiderman, Statistika uslug, 1974, p. 62. “ Narkhoz I972, p. 461. 346 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.