SOVIET ECONOMIST SAYS PRODUCTION FIGURES PADDED
A leading Soviet economist said the
practice of padding figures was significantly inflating the
country's industrial production data.
    "According to the information of state monitoring organs,
the padding of figures makes up one-and-a-half to three per
cent of the volume of production," Alexei Sergeyev told the
official newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya.
    "In my opinion, it is significantly higher," Sergeyev, who
works at the Economics Institute of the Soviet Union's Academy
of Sciences, said.
    Most Western economists have for years allowed for a
certain padding of figures when analysing Soviet statistics for
industrial production.
    Sergeyev said about 600 mln roubles was lost annually in
raw material industries by paying wages and bonuses for work
which was not in fact performed.
    He said the elimination of figure-padding and other
malpractices would save billions of roubles and would pay for
the Soviet Union's social development program up to the year
2000.
 REUTER
