, accounted for only 3 to 4 percent of the trade annually. The
Soviet Union alone provided more than half the imports and absorbed an
equal amount of exports. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
and Czechoslovakia were the main COMECON trading partners after the
Soviet Union, but the volume of trade with these countries was very much
lower. The share of East Germany in the total trade had been 10.5
percent in 1960 but ranged between 8 and 8.6 percent in the 1965-70
period. The proportion of trade with Czechoslovakia declined from 9.7
percent in 1960 to only 4.8 percent in 1970.

The orientation of trade toward the Soviet Union has been based largely
on political factors but has also been dictated by the shortage of
export goods salable in Western markets and the inadequacy of foreign
exchange reserves (see ch. 10). Trade with COMECON members is conducted
on the basis of bilateral clearing accounts that do not involve the use
of foreign exchange. Furthermore, the Soviet Union has supplied Bulgaria
with a large volume of industrial plants and equipment in exchange for
the products of these plants. In the 1971-75 period trade with the
Soviet Union is scheduled to increase by 60 percent over the volume in
the preceding five-year period, and the share of the Soviet Union in the
total trade volume is planned to reach 68 percent.

Trade with noncommunist countries rose from about 15 percent of the
total volume in 1961 to 27 percent in 1966 but declined thereafter to 22
percent in 1970. From three-fourths to four-fifths of this trade was
accounted for by Western industrialized nations, primarily the Federal
Republic of Germany (West Germany), Italy, France and Great Britain. The
balance of the noncommunist trade was with developing countries, mainly
India, the United Arab Republic (UAR), and Iraq. Trade with the United
States has been negligible.

There has been a gradual shift in exports from agricultural to
industrial commodities and from raw materials to manufactured and
semiprocessed products. Yet in 1970 exports of agricultural origin still
constituted 55 percent of the export volume, including 8 percent of raw
farm products. The share of industrial exports rose from 25 percent in
1960 to 45 percent in 1970, of which 13 and 27 percent, respectively,
consisted of machinery and equipment. In 1972 the proportion of
machinery and equipment in exports was reported to have risen to 34
percent.

Machinery and equipm