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and manganese ores, pyrites, and phosphates. The industrial countries also supply some textile fibers and foodstuffs. Canada and the United States have sold Czechoslovakia sizable amounts of wheat and corn in some years, and the Scandinavian countries and Japan provide fish. The main imports from the industrial nations, however, are machinery (28% of purchases) and dyes, fertilizers, plastics, and other chemical products (14%). Czechoslovakia also imports some types of sheet steel and nonferrous metals from industrial nations.

Czechoslovakia exports coal and coke to other Eastern European Communist countries and uranium to the U.S.S.R., but its main exports to Communist partners are manufactured goods. Nearly all of Czechoslovakia's exports to less-developed countries also are manufactured goods. Almost three-fifths of the manufactured goods going to both these groups of countries are machinery and equipment. Other manufactures exported by Czechoslovakia include rolled steel, pharmaceuticals, glass and ceramics, textiles and clothing, shoes, furniture, and musical instruments. Exports to developed countries include raw materials, such as malt and hops, other foodstuffs, coal, wood, and a variety of manufactured goods. Sales of machinery amounted to only 17% of exports to these countries in 1972.

d. Problems (C)

Czechoslovakia's strong ties to the intra-CEMA barter trade system has eliminated most incentives for producers to gear output specifically for the export market and to adapt quality and product mix to changes in demand. As a result, Czechoslovakia trades with hard currency partners on extremely unfavorable terms, paying high prices for imports and receiving low prices for exports, relative to average world market prices. The Czechoslovaks have estimated that they export, on the average, at prices averaging not much more than half those received by competitors and pay for imports nearly twice as much as some other purchasers of similar products. The several trade fairs sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Trade are only modest attempts to expose managers to outside technology and to promote Czechoslovak machinery and products. The Husak regime has done little to improve the situation; if anything, the political atmosphere has forced the country into closer economic ties with CEMA.

Czechoslovakia faces fewer problems in trade with less-developed non-Communist countries, much of which is conducted through barter arrangements. Czechoslovak exports still must compete with those of Western suppliers but most of the developing nations have less exacting demands than developed countries.

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