Market Relations and Instruments
It is not surprising, given the size of the Soviet economy, that intra-Comecon trade was dominated by exchanges between the Soviet Union and the other members. Exchanges of Soviet fuels and raw materials for capital goods and manufactured items for consumer consumption had characterized trade, particularly among the original members. The liquidity shortage in the early 1980s forced the European Comecon countries to work to strengthen the importance of intraregional trade. In the early 1980s, intraregional trade rose to 60% of foreign trade of Comecon countries as a whole; for individual members it ranged from 45 to 50% in the case of Hungary, Romania, and the Soviet Union, to 83% for Cuba and 96% for Mongolia.
Trade among the members was negotiated on an annual basis and in considerable detail at the governmental level and was then followed up by interenterprise contracts. Early Comecon efforts to facilitate trade among members concentrated on development of uniform technical, legal, and statistical standards and on encouragement of long-term trade agreements. The 1971 Comprehensive Program sought to liberalize the system somewhat by recommending broad limits to "fixed-quota" trade among members (trade subject to quantitative or value targets set by bilateral trade agreements). Section VI, Paragraph 19 of the Comprehensive Program affirms that "mutual trade in commodities for which no quotas were established shall be carried on beginning in 1971 with a view to stimulating the development of trade turnover, through expansion of the range and assortment of traded commodities, and to making trade in these commodities more brisk." Later in the same paragraph the Comprehensive Program called on members to "seek opportunities to develop the export and import of quota-free commodities and to create conditions essential for trade in such commodities." There was no evidence, however, that this appeal has had significant effect or that quota-free trade has grown in importance under the program.
Read more about this topic: Comprehensive Program For Socialist Economic Integration
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