Bulgarian industrial growth and structure: 1970–89

THE OFFICIAL INFORMATION on industrial growth and structure in Bulgaria is prepared and published by the National Statistical Institute (NSI, the former Central Statistical Board). The information about the aggregated macroeconomic indicators of Bulgaria's economic development in the past is far from perfect. The ideologists did not overlook anything which could be interpreted ambiguously. All the figures (especially those for the growth rates of gross aggregates) were checked in advance and 'corrected' in the inaccessible rooms of the political leaders. Statistics was a science for the approval of 'the irresistible socialist progress'. Things are changing now, everything is going to find its own place (including statistics in general, as well as within statistics too), but the state of the art is still unsatisfactory. The Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Bulgaria (Statisticheski godishnik na Republika Bulgaria) for 1990, with data up to 1989, again reproduces all the indicators calculated before. Thus one can see that the gross material product and the national income produced increased 2.7 times between 1970 and 1989 (p. 120), the consumption fund-2.4 times (p. 125), the total industrial production-2.9 times (p. 163), the total construction output-2.3 times (p. 210), the real income per capita-2.4 times (p. 79). The consumer price statistics show the reverse picture-prices increased less than 25% in 1980-88 (p. 303). This information is more than suspicious.1 We need an unbiased and objective view of the past to investigate the real economy. This requires the construction of alternative estimates.