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Czechoslovakia THE EIGHTH FIVE-YEAR PLAN, 1986-90
The Eighth Five-Year Plan called for further
"intensification" within the economy. The plan focused on raising
the quality and technological level of production, lowering the
cost of energy and materials in relation to output, increasing
labor productivity, accelerating the pace of innovation at the
workplace, improving discipline, and continuing the "structural"
shift of the economy from productive activities requiring great
consumption of energy to more advanced technologies and capitalintensive industry. National income was to rise 19 percent, or
just over 3.5 percent annually on average. Plans called for
industrial output to grow 15.8 percent, an average increase of
about 3 percent yearly, while personal consumption was to grow by
only 11.9 percent. Modest as these targets were, they were higher
than the results achieved during the Seventh Five-Year Plan. Only
agriculture was to grow at a rate slower than that of the
previous plan period; with a total increase of 6.9 percent, it
would average just over 1 percent growth annually. Investment,
while still low, would increase 10.4 percent during the plan (as
compared with 2.5 percent in the 1981-85 period). Special
attention was to be given to the machine-building and electronics
industries, the chemical and metallurgical industries,
construction of nuclear power plants and expansion of the natural
gas network, and environment-related projects. The plan called
for exports to grow at a higher rate than the national income.
The government did not plan any substantial borrowing in hard
currency, concentrating instead on paying off its relatively
modest (US$2 billion) debt to the West.
The plan called for achievement of the desired growth largely
through improved labor productivity; 92 to 95 percent of the
growth was to occur in this way. Material costs were to fall by
1.5 percent yearly on average, and specific consumption of fuel
was to fall by 2.9 percent. Achievement of both of these goals
would require greater savings than had been possible during the
1981-85 plan period.
In the mid-1980s, Czechoslovak leaders acknowledged the
persisting weaknesses in the country's economy and its need to
modernize more rapidly. Although the government announced no
major reforms in conjunction with the Eighth Five-Year Plan, in
1987 an experiment was begun involving about 120 industrial
enterprises. These enterprises were to receive only key planning
figures from the central authorities; otherwise, they were to
have increased autonomy in planning production, seeking
profitable forms for their activities, and managing their own
finances. The reforms represented a significant step beyond the
modest "Set of Measures" of 1981, which had retained strict
central controls. Western analysts viewed the experiment as a
cautious response to the more ambitious reforms sponsored by
General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union.
* * *
For English readers, a valuable source of information is John
N. Stevens's Czechoslovakia at the Crossroads, which
surveys the period from 1948 to the early 1980s. Much of the
statistical data concerning economic policy and performance in
this chapter has been drawn from Stevens's survey. Official
statistics may be found in the annual Bulletin of the
Statni banka Cezechoslovenska. The Foreign Broadcast Information
Service's Daily Report: Eastern Europe provides current
reporting of statistics and economic developments carried in the
Czechoslovak media. Issues of current concern to Czechoslovak
economists are presented in the commentaries and essays of
Czechoslovak Economic Digest. The United States Congress
Joint Economic Committee regularly prints collections of articles
on Eastern Europe; as of mid-1987, the most recent collection was
the three-volume East European Economies: Slow Growth in the
1980s, published in 1985 and 1986.
The standard sources of economic statistics in the Czech
language are the yearly Statisticka rocenka Ceskoslovenske
socialisticke republiky and the Historicka statisticka
rocenka CSSR. (For further information and complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of August 1987
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