Romania FOREIGN TRADE
International Trade Fair Building, Bucharest
Courtesy Scott Edelman
Goals and Policy
During the postwar era, Romania used foreign trade
effectively
as an instrument to enhance the development of the
national economy
and to pursue its goal of political and economic
independence. In
this context, earning a foreign-trade surplus was not a
primary
concern until the late 1970s. The primary goal, rather,
was
acquisition of the modern technologies and raw materials
needed to
create and sustain a highly diversified industrial plant.
The
export program was geared to earning the required hard
currency to
purchase these materials and technologies. But in the
1980s, the
focus of foreign trade was shifted to curtail imports and
run large
hard-currency surpluses to repay the debt that had accrued
in the
previous two decades. Enterprises that produced for export
received
preferential treatment in resource allocation and higher
prices for
their output.
Foreign trade was a state monopoly. Trade policy was
established by the PCR and the government, and its
implementation
was the responsibility of the Ministry of Foreign Trade
and
International Economic Cooperation. Subordinate to the
ministry
were special state agencies--foreign-trade
organizations--that
conducted all import and export transactions. In 1969 the
ministry
was reorganized to become essentially a coordinating
agency, and
within a year only three foreign-trade organizations
remained under
its direct control. This decentralization was short-lived,
however,
as the number of foreign-trade organizations was reduced
from
fifty-six in 1972 to forty in 1975, and all but four of
these were
returned to the ministry's control.
Data as of July 1989
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