CONGRESS(I)-A Good Turn

adjustment have proved to be much greater than expected. Expectations of improvements in living standards were greatly exaggerated in the initial period. The stabilisation policies adopted and the conventional price and trade liberalisations, as dictated by the multilateral agencies, have led to much deeper and longer recessions than expected.. living standards have fallen rather sharply in every one of the 25 east European and successor Soviet Union republics. In eastern Europe, gross domestic product (GDP) or net material product (NMP) experienced an absolute decline of 10 per cent in 1992, bringing the cumulative loss in three years since 1989 to more than 30 per cent" It is interesting, though not surprising, that countries which had the closest links with the erstwhile COMECON and the Soviet trading system have suffered the sharpest declines in GDP/NMP. Bulgaria's NMP declined by 17.5 per cent in 1990, 25.7 per cent in 1991 and 22 per cent in 1992, a total fall of 52 per cent in three years. Romania's GDP fell by 5.8 per cent about 36 per cent in four years. Countries