Industrial expansion continues. The index of production has now risen 7 to 8 per cent in a year ; there are no signs of a labour shortage, the balance of payments surplus is still adequate, and prices are still flat. The initial effects of the Government's expansionary measures are now wearing off and production may rise more slowly—though it should still go on rising. It is unlikely that there will be any need in the coming months for Government action to check the rise in demand.

In general the importance of consumer goods in world trade is declining. But this is not true of durable consumer goods. From 1937 to 1950 this group held its share of total trade in manufactured goods at about 7 per cent; from 1950 to 1957 the figure rose to 8 per cent; and in 1958—mainly because of the sharp rise in shipments of cars from Europe to the United States—it went up to nearly 9 per cent (table 9).

In 1946, when the Soviet economy was still suffering acutely from war damage, Stalin addressed a meeting in Moscow and announced some long-term economic targets : the aim, he said, was to treble the 1940 output of basic industries, and in particular to reach an output of 50 million tons of pig-iron, 60 million tons of steel and 60 million tons of oil. ‘This will take three five-year plans, or maybe longer’, he said, suggesting that he hoped to reach these goals in the early 1960s. Ambitious as his targets seemed at the time, they will in fact probably be exceeded by 1960—in the case of oil by a very wide margin. The period from 1946 to 1956 was one of exceptionally rapid growth. In the first years, the restoration of war-damaged productive capacity and reparations deliveries helped, but progress continued to be very rapid during the fifth five-year plan (1951–1956), when these factors were no longer important.