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Romania Administrative Hierarchy
The government body constitutionally endowed with
supreme
authority in administering the PCR's economic program was
the
Council of Ministers, whose members simultaneously held
important
positions in the party. The number of ministries
fluctuated over
the years because of repeated reform efforts to improve
efficiency;
in 1989, there were twenty-five ministries with a strictly
economic
mission. Supra-ministerial bodies known as branch
coordination
councils synchronized the activities of ministries in
related
sectors, for example, mining, oil, geology, and electric
and
thermal power; chemicals, petrochemicals, and light
industries;
machine building and metallurgy; timber, construction
materials,
cooperatives, and small-scale industry; transportation and
telecommunications; investment and construction; and
agriculture,
food processing and procurement, forestry, and water
management.
The ministries were responsible for accomplishing the
economic
goals set forth in the Unitary National Socioeconomic
Plan. They
assigned production, financial, and operational targets
and made
investment decisions for the economic entities subordinate
to their
authority.
The first echelon of administration below the
ministries
consisted of the industrial centrale (sing.,
central, see Glossary).
The centrale were analogous to the
production
associations of the Soviet Union and other Comecon
countries.
Conceived in the economic reforms of 1967 as autonomous
economic
entities vertically and horizontally integrating several
producing
enterprises as well as research and development
facilities, the
first centrale appeared in 1969. Their number
rapidly
dwindled from the original 207 to only 102 in 1974.
Although in
theory the centrale were created to decentralize
planning,
investment, and other forms of economic decision making,
their
functions were never clearly delineated, and in the 1980s
they
appeared to have little real autonomy. Their authority was
limited
to monitoring plan fulfillment and designating production
schedules
for the plants under their jurisdiction.
At the bottom of the administrative hierarchy were the
enterprises and their individual production units. They
received
highly detailed production plans, operating budgets, and
resource
allocations from superior echelons and were responsible
for
accomplishing the economic directives that came down to
them
through the hierarchy. Notwithstanding official
proclamations of
enterprise self-management after the
New Economic and Financial Mechanism (see Glossary)
became law in 1978, the
managerial cadres
on this level enjoyed autonomy only in the mundane area of
streamlining operations to raise output.
State and cooperative farms held a position in the
administrative hierarchy analogous to that of industrial
enterprises. They received detailed production plans that
specified
what was to be sown, what inputs would be provided, and
how much
farm output was to be delivered to the state. After 1980,
county
(
judet--see Glossary)
and village people's councils
were
responsible for fulfillment of agricultural production
targets by
the farms in their jurisdiction
(see Local Government
, ch.
4).
Machine stations, analogous to Stalin's
machine-and-tractor
stations, had been set up to control access to equipment,
thereby
ensuring compliance with the PCR agricultural program. The
manager
of each machine station coordinated the work of, on
average, five
state and cooperative farms. In 1979, the stations became
the focal
point of a new managerial entity, the agro-industrial
councils,
which were intended to parallel the industrial
centrale
(see
Farm Organization, this ch.).
In addition to its sectoral administrative structure,
the
economy was organized on a territorial basis. In every
judet, city, town, and commune, so-called people's
councils--among their other functions--supervised the
implementation of national economic policy by the
enterprises and
organizations located within their territory. The
permanent bureaus
of these bodies, without exception, were headed by local
party
chairmen, whose political credentials were validated by
Bucharest.
In 1976 a permanent Legislative Chamber of the People's
Councils
was established. Its membership--elected from the
executive
committees of the regional and local councils--debated
economic
bills before they were considered by the GNA.
Data as of July 1989
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