|
Yugoslavia The Third World
As a founding member of the Nonaligned Movement, Yugoslavia
established and maintained commercial relations with a large
number of Third World countries
(see Nonalignment
, ch. 4). But
trade with the underdeveloped countries never approached the
level of trade with Western Europe or the Soviet Union. In 1987
total trade volume with Iraq, Yugoslavia's largest Third World
partner, was about one-sixth that with the Soviet Union, and onefifth that with West Germany. Between 1979 and 1987 both imports
from and exports to Third-World countries declined slightly as a
proportion of the respective Yugoslav totals.
In the 1980s, two factors increasingly defined Yugoslavia's
trade policy with the Third World: the need for hard currency and
the need to limit dependency on Soviet oil by keeping other
channels open. Both considerations encouraged commercial activity
with oil-rich countries such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, Algeria,
Angola, and Indonesia. Because those countries also sold oil to
the West, they were able to pay their Yugoslav partners in hard
currency.
In the 1980s, Yugoslav energy and machine building industries
were especially active in start-to-finish construction of
electrical power plants and hydroelectric stations, power
transmission lines, irrigation systems, and other major
construction projects in selected Third-World countries. Two
firms, Energoinvest of Sarajevo and Energoproekt of Belgrade,
represented groups of Yugoslav enterprises that acted as
contractors in such cases. In 1988 Yugoslav construction services
abroad were valued at $US1.4 billion. In 1990 Yugoslav fuel
industries were active in joint oil and natural gas exploration
in Syria, Tunisia, Libya, Angola, and Algeria.
Yugoslav consumer goods, most notably consumer electronics
from the Nis Electronics Industry, vehicles from the Red Banner
auto plants, and footwear, also went to Third-World markets.
Major customers were India, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq.
Data as of December 1990
|
