p The Communist Party and the Soviet Government are constantly orienting the planning agencies towards a more efficient organisation of their work. The transition to the sectoral principle of managing the economy has created favourable conditions for applying a single technical policy, for concentrating and specialising production. As a result of the economic reform cost accounting has become a more vigorous instrument, the system of material incentives has become more effective and the workers’ collectives have stepped up their efforts to find and utilise reserves within their enterprises. All this makes for improved planning.

p Every year the scale of the Soviet economy expands, ramified inter-sector relations are established, and the role of scientific and technological progress in the development of production rises. More and more often we face big economic problems that can only be solved through participation of many sectors of social production. To cope with these problems efficiently we are trying to secure precise interaction of sectors, not allowing a departmental and parochial approach in the formulation and substantiation of plans.

p An example of the comprehensive approach to economic planning is afforded by the decisions on the development of the material and technical basis of agriculture, which is needed for a swift and stable growth of agricultural output.

p The inter-sector approach to evaluating economic measures and charting ways for carrying them out imposes special responsibility on the personnel of the state planning system. The consolidation of the sectoral system of economic management in the last five years creates favourable conditions for releasing the State Planning Committee from the task of settling numerous current questions and enables it to concentrate on dealing with cardinal economic problems.

p Efficiency in managing the national economy greatly depends on the further enhancement of the role of ministries 95 and departments in planning the respective sectors of production. Today they have every possibility of putting the plans for the development of their sectors on a sounder basis, of bearing full responsibility for the study and satisfaction of the country’s needs in equipment, raw materials and high-quality consumer goods. And the ministries are doing their best to utilise these possibilities in their work.

p Alongside this, great attention is being paid to combining sectoral and territorial planning by enhancing the role of the planning agencies of the Union Republics and local Soviets, of ministries and departments.

p The planning agencies are persistently working to improve the organisation and techniques of planning. Their chief concern is to analyse and reflect in their plans the indicators of economic efficiency, particularly the efficiency of capital investments, the quality of goods, the utilisation of labour resources and fixed assets and questions of technological progress. Definite progress along these lines has already been achieved.

p Another important task of the planning agencies is to further improve the balance of the main sections of the plan: production and capital construction and their provision with materials and equipment; growth in effective demand and a corresponding increase in the production of goods and services; financial resources and the expenditures planned by society. These problems are being solved on the basis of a comprehensive application of the achievements of modern science and technology and the wealth of experience accumulated by socialist planning.

p Big demands are made on the planning and economic agencies in view of the task of long-term planning of national economic development set by the 24th CPSU Congress. At present Soviet economic plans cover one-year or fiveyear periods. This will no longer do. Many problems arise which it is impossible to solve within one or even two fiveyear periods. These include, for example, the development of new mineral deposits, the building up of large industrial complexes, the development of big industrial areas and centres. The need for long-range planning is also dictated by the pattern of the present-day external economic relations. Specifically, in recent years the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance has already examined questions of 96 economic integration which go beyond the bounds of one five-year period. The absence of planning projections designated for a long-range perspective often hinders the adoption of properly grounded decisions concerning the allocation of capital investments, the siting of new large enterprises, the determination of the trends of geological prospecting, the working of mineral deposits and the organisation of research and development work. That is why a long-term plan for the economic development of the USSR is an essential requisite for deeper scientific substantiation of the five-year plans and constitutes an important factor in raising the level of all economic planning.

p Modern computers as well as economic and mathematical methods are of great importance for balancing current and long-term plans, for finding optimal decisions and accelerating plan computation. Diverse and intricate calculations, both sectoral and inter-sectoral, are now made by the Chief Computing Centre of the USSR State Planning Committee. This work will be greatly extended in the new five-year period.

p Formulation of a long-term plan for the economic and social development of the USSR will be of great importance for consistently implementing the decisions adopted by CMEA member countries on deepening socialist integration in its different forms, and this will make it possible to take better advantage of the socialist international division of labour.

p Long-range planning of the national economy presupposes the improvement of organisation of the work on scientific, technical and socio-economic forecasting.

The State Planning Committee has submitted to the USSR Council of Ministers proposals for the elaboration of a draft long-range general plan for the development of the Soviet economy. These proposals envisage the enlistment of a wide range of the planning and economic agencies, the USSR Academy of Sciences and other research and designing organisations for accomplishing these tasks.

Reviewing the path traversed by the socialist economy, we are bound to acknowledge the decisive importance played in its development by the state economic plans, the 97 successful fulfilment of which has ensured high economic growth rates, the unparalleled advance of culture, the strengthening of the defence potential and the conversion of the Soviet Union in a brief period into a powerful highly industrialised socialist state. It is economic planning that makes it possible to provide an efficient guidance of the economy on a country-wide scale, to set optimal proportions, to distribute the productive forces rationally and to save material, manpower and financial resources. The rich experience accumulated in the accelerated economic development of the USSR on the basis of state plans has received international recognition and is extensively utilised by the countries which have taken the socialist road. L. I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, in his report on the centenary of Lenin’s birth stressed the importance of socialist planning, saying that the planned development of the entire economy at the highest technical level in the interest of the people’s well-being was a cardinal feature of socialism built in the USSR.