troduced products, such as chemicals and television sets, increased
more rapidly in the 1960s than did the output of traditional items (see
table 13).

Improving the quality of manufactured products has been a major concern
of the party and government, particularly from the point of view of
competitiveness in foreign markets. With some exceptions, such as men's
and women's knitwear, a lack of competitiveness was clearly demonstrated
in mid-1971 by the results of a giant Romanian trade exhibition in
Duesseldorf, West Germany. This exhibit was reported to have achieved
just the reverse of what was intended and to have demonstrated the
inferiority of Romanian goods compared to Western European and Japanese
products. Quality considerations, however, did not inhibit an attempt to
market a Romanian-built motor vehicle of the jeep type in the United
States.

_Table 13. Output of Selected Industrial Products in Romania, 1960 and
1969_

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Product Unit of Measure 1960 1969
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Pig iron thousand metric tons 1,014 3,477
Steel do 1,806 5,540
Coal and lignite do 6,768 16,976
Crude oil do 11,500 12,346
Natural gas billion cubic feet 365 850
Electricity million kilowatt-hours 7,650 31,509
Fertilizers[1] thousand metric tons 71 720
Artificial fibers do 4 56
Plastics do 12 137
Synthetic rubber do 0 55
Tires thousand units 743 3,166
Paper thousand metric tons 140 398
Tractors units 17,102 24,895
Motor vehicles do 12,123 56,998
Cement thousand metric tons 3,054 7,515
Timber million cubic feet 139 186
Textiles million square yards 393 672
Footwear million pairs 30 63
Radi