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 Part ll Methodology The estimation of Soviet GNP and its change over time presents several thorny methodological problems. This part first summarizes the major issues in formu- lating an accounting structure and devising a set of synthetic prices that will be in accord with the Western theoretical model of national income valua- tion and growth measurement. A discussion of the construction of our 1970 base-year accounts using Soviet official prices and their conversion to our synthetic prices follows. Having described the base-year accounts, the discus- sion then shifts to the methodological problems in- volved in measuring the growth of Soviet GNP over time. The central problem is how to measure the real growth of a diverse collection of goods and services when the relative prices and quantities are shifting. Index number theory tells us that there is no single answer to this question. A summary of the problem is provided here with additional discussion. of a few specific problems that are particularly serious in the Soviet case. Finally, all of the indexes used to measure the growth of the various components of GNP by sector of origin and end use and their underlying methodologies are described. The Accounting Framework The accounts used to compute GNP are partially determined by the institutional structure of the coun- try involved. This section first describes the account- ing units that comprise the Soviet economy and then describes the main financial flows involving these units. Next a number of definitional problems are considered and the resulting differences between the US GNP accounts and those constructed here for the Soviet Union are discussed. The Accounting Units There are four important types of accounting units in the USSR. The first two are khozraschet enterprises and so-called budget institutions, both of which are 27 state organizations. The other two are the collective farm (kolkhoz), which is part state and part coopera- tive, and the private household. Khozraschet Enterprises. A khozraschet enterprise is a state organization that operates on a profit-and loss- basis. It sells its output, uses the proceeds to purchase its inputs, and thereby obtains a profit or loss. The enterprise, however, must regulate production in con- formity with the highly detailed state economic plan and is in other ways directly administered by the government. Although it differs operationally from a private corporation in the United States, a kh0zras- chet enterprise, when viewed from a GNP accounting standpoint, is similar to and treated much like a private corporation. It is similar in that the financial relations between a khozraschet enterprise and the state are conducted on a net rather than a gross basis. The enterprise is expected to be managed sufficiently well to obtain enough profits to finance certain activi- ties, and the amount of government revenues obtained from the enterprise depends on its performance.” An enterprise’s profit is disposed of according to administrative rules. Most profits go to the state budget, much like an income tax in the United States. In 1970, for example, 59 percent of the profits of khozrraschet enterprises were turned over to the bud- get. The government takes such a large share of the profits because it is directly involved in the capital transactions of khozraschet enterprises, contrary to the situation in a private US corporation. Most capital investment is paid for by allocations from the state budget. Retained profits of enterprises are used not only for capital investment, but also for a variety of ” it should not be forgotten that a khozraschet enterprise is a state organization. All of its capital stock is state owned and can be taken away without compensation, just as the profits derived from the operation of the state-owned assets also can be taken away. The director of an enterprise is appointed by the state and is charged with fulfillment in the most economical manner of the production plan assigned to the enterprise. 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.