commodities—grain and other agricultural products, machinery and equipment, steel products (including large-diameter pipe), consumer manufactures;
partners—Eastern Europe 50%, EC 13%, Cuba, China, US (1989)
_#_External debt: $55 billion (1990)
_#_Industrial production: growth rate - 2.4% (1990 est.)
_#_Electricity: 350,000,000 kW capacity; 1,740,000 million kWh produced, 5,920 kWh per capita (1990)
_#_Industries: diversified, highly developed capital goods and defense industries; comparatively less developed consumer goods industries
_#_Agriculture: accounts for roughly 20% of GNP and labor force; production based on large collective and state farms; inefficiently managed; wide range of temperate crops and livestock produced; world's third-largest grain producer after the US and China; shortages of grain, oilseeds, and meat; world's leading producer of sawnwood and roundwood; annual fish catch among the world's largest
_#_Illicit drugs: illegal producer of cannabis and opium poppy, mostly for domestic consumption; government has begun eradication program to control cultivation; used as a transshipment country for illicit drugs to Western Europe
_#_Economic aid: donor—extended to non-Communist less developed countries (1954-89), $49.6 billion; extended to other Communist countries (1954-89), $154 billion
_#_Currency: ruble (plural—rubles); 1 ruble (R) = 100 kopeks