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 VIII in many Ways. Foremost is their use in making assessments of the Soviet econ- omy by analyzing the interplay of the disposition of resources for consump- tion, defense, and future growth. Insights into the regime’s policies and priori- ties can be obtained by assessing the “burden” of defense and the pattern of allocating the “growth dividend.” In addition to being a measure of the size and growth of the economy, GNP also provides a standard against which other economic variables can be measured, such as the amount of energy used per unit of GNP. The GNP data base forms the foundation for forecasting, either by using large econometric models or other means. Such forecasts not only concern the future growth rate of total GNP, but also can be employed to assess other im- portant variables, such as the domestic demand for oil. The GNP estimates can be used to compare the size of the Soviet economy with the United States or other countries. and the relative priorities each country assigns to the uses of its national product. Such international com- parisons depend, of course, on the domestic value of GNP or one of its com- ponents. For example, an earlier publication in this series estimated the value of Soviet consumption relative to other countries? Despite the limitations of the estimates, the work expended on the GIA independent measures represents a valuable contribution to economic analysis of the USSR. The results shown in this volume present a picture of Soviet economic growth difl'erent from that given by the ofiicial measures. Each of the four studies presents comparative results in detail. By way of summary, the following tabulation compares average annual growth rates for the four aggregate indices and their closest Soviet official counterparts for 195l—80: A average mnnual rate of growth in I‘-he jz/cars 1951-80 [Percent] CIA Soviet measure measure GNP 1 _____________________________ __ Industrial production _____________________________________ __ Agriculture production 2 __________________________________ __ Per capita consumption ____________________ __ I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I PNP? U1<ZJ30~7 QWQN OI-*~I»I= ‘The CIA measure for the same coverage as the Soviet measure (see text) is 5.3 percent per year “The measure shown represents “net output,” or gross output less products used by agriculture (seed and feed). This is the concept of output closest in coverage to the official Soviet measure of farm output. As a contributing sector to GNP the appropriate measure for agriculture output is value added (net output less material purchases from other sectors) which over this period grew at 2.0 percent per year. It is clear that, except for agriculture, the growth ra'te differences are large and, over a 30-year period, indicate a significantly different picture of economic growth than that provided by ofiicial Soviet statistics. “‘Consumption in the USSR: An International Comparison," IRS. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, August 1981. 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.