ABSTRACT
Internal money and credit relations have been subordinated to the functioning of a planned economy, monetary and credit systems cut off from the outside world, and an autonomous price structure created. In many instances these have functioned successfully; but the system of control over foreign trade created in an earlier period has shown itself to be poorly suited for active involvement in world trade, and even less suited for effective accounting. The foreign trade management system has progressed further in Hungary than in the other Eastern countries. In the 1968 reform, the state foreign trade enterprise –which had been under the Ministry of Foreign Trade –was deprived of its monopoly status. The state, which controls foreign trade through its central authorities, also controls all foreign clearing and credit business through the state banking and financial apparatus. The transferable ruble performs these functions if existing foreign trade relations make this possible.
