ABSTRACT
If it is a bad thing that the Central Statistical Administration is an academic institution, it is a hundred times worse, and absolutely catastrophic, that the State Planning Commission is academic. At the beginning of last year it was already plain that there was no organ for co-ordinating and actually controlling economic matters. The present organisation of the State Planning Commission approximates outwardly to what I proposed last year, but only outwardly. In essence the parcelling out of responsibility remains a fact, and it is absolutely unknown who in practice controls the indents for fuel, transport, raw materials or money. As a matter of inter-departmental controversy these questions are put before the Council of Labour and Defence or the Politburo and are solved by rule of thumb, and that at the moment when the water is reaching our throats. There should be an establishment with an economic calendar for a year ahead hanging on the wall; an establishment that anticipates and, in the light of its foresight, co-ordinates. The State Planning Commission should be such an establishment. In my opinion the chairmanship of the State Planning Commission would be for one of the Deputies a much more realistic task than anything that is spoken of in the resolution.
