_#_Flag: red with the yellow silhouette of a crossed hammer and sickle below a yellow-edged five-pointed red star in the upper hoist-side corner
_*Economy #_Overview: The first six years of perestroyka (economic and political restructuring) have undermined the institutions and processes of the Soviet command economy without replacing them with efficiently functioning markets. The initial reforms have featured greater authority for enterprise managers over prices, wages, product mix, investment, sources of supply, and customers. But in the absence of effective market discipline, the result has been the disappearance of low-price goods, excessive wage increases, an even larger volume of unfinished construction projects, and, in general, continued economic stagnation. The Gorbachev regime has made at least four serious errors in economic policy in these six years: the unpopular and short-lived antialcohol campaign; the initial cutback in imports of consumer goods; the failure to act decisively at the beginning for the privatization of agriculture; and the buildup of a massive overhang of unspent rubles in the hands of households and enterprises. The regime has vacillated among a series of ambitious economic policy prescriptions put forth by leading economists and political leaders. The plans vary from proposals for (a) quick marketization of the economy; (b) gradual marketization; (c) a period of retrenchment to ensure a stable base for future marketization; and (d) a return to disciplined central planning and allocation. The economy, caught between two systems, is suffering from even greater mismatches between what is being produced and what would serve the best interests of enterprises and households. Meanwhile, the seething nationality problems have been dislocating regional patterns of economic specialization and pose a further major threat to growth prospects over the next few years. Official Soviet statistics report GNP fell by 2% in 1990, but the actual decline was substantially greater. Whatever the numerical decline, it does not capture the increasing disjointures in the economy evidenced by emptier shelves, longer lines, increased barter, and widespread strikes.
_#_GNP: approximately $2,660 billion, per capita $9,130; real growth rate - 2.4% to - 5.0% (1990 est. based on a reconstruction of official Soviet statistics); note—because of the continued unraveling of Soviet economic and statistical controls, the estimate is subject to even greater uncertainties than in earlier years; the dollar estimates most likely overstate Soviet GNP to some extent because of an incomplete allowance for the poor quality, narrow assortment, and low performance characteristics of Soviet goods and services; the - 2.4% growth figure is based on the application of CIA's usual estimating methods whereas the - 5.0% figure is corrected for measurement problems that worsened sharply in 1990
_#_Inflation rate (consumer prices): 14% (1990 est.)
_#_Unemployment rate: official Soviet statistics imply an unemployment rate of 1 to 2 percent in 1990; USSR's first official unemployment estimate, however, is acknowledged to be rough
_#_Budget: revenues 422 billion rubles; expenditures 510 billion rubles, including capital expenditures of 53 billion rubles (1990 est.)
_#_Exports: $109.3 billion (f.o.b., 1989);
commodities—petroleum and petroleum products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a wide variety of manufactured goods (primarily capital goods and arms);
partners—Eastern Europe 46%, EC 16%, Cuba 6%, US, Afghanistan (1989)
_#_Imports: $114.7 billion (c.i.f., 1989);