Debt Problems of Eastern Europe

In this book, Iliana Zloch-Christy analyzes the causes and consequences of the massive Eastern European debt to the West accumulated in the 1970s. In assessing the region's convertible-currency debt problem, the author addresses: the origins of the debt being essential to Eastern Europe's economic development; the effects of the countries' own adjustments to the problem; and Western policies toward resolving the Eastern European debt during the rest of the 1980s. During the 1970s, Eastern European countries increased their borrowing from the West considerably in order to modernize their economies and improve the competitiveness of their goods in Western markets. The degrees of liberalization of convertible-currency imports and borrowing in the individual countries differed depending upon internal political choices. Poland, Hungary, and German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Romania borrowed heavily, whereas Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union were comparatively cautious. It was expected that the resulting debts in all of these countries would be re-paid through increased exports in the late 1970s and early 1980s.