Overview: For 20 years Communist Yugoslavia had been trying to replace the Stalinist command economy with a decentralized semimarket system that features worker self-management councils in all large plants. This hybrid system neared collapse in late 1989 when inflation soared. The government applied shock therapy in 1990 under an IMF standby program that provides tight control over monetary expansion, a freeze on wages, the pegging of the dinar to the deutsche mark, and a partial price freeze on energy, transportation, and communal services. This program brought hyperinflation to a halt and encouraged a rise in foreign investment. Since June 1990, however, inflation has rebounded and threatens to rise further in 1991. Estimated annual
inflation for 1990 is 164%. Other huge problems remain: rising unemployment, the low quality of industrial output, and striking differences in income between the poorer southern regions and the comparatively well-off northern areas. Even so, political issues far outweigh economic problems in importance.

GNP: $120.1 billion, per capita $5,040; real growth rate - 6.3% (1990 est.)

Inflation rate (consumer prices): 164% (1990)

Unemployment rate: 16% (1990)

Budget: revenues $6.4 billion; expenditures $6.4 billion, including capital expenditures of $NA (1990)

Exports: $13.3 billion (f.o.b., 1990 est.); commodities--raw materials and semimanufactures 50%, consumer goods 31%, capital goods and equipment 19%; partners--EC 53%, USSR and Eastern Europe 27%, less developed countries 12.9%, US 4.8%, other 2.3%

Imports: $17.6 billion (c.i.f., 1990 est.); commodities--raw materials and semimanufactures 79%, capital goods and equipment 15%, consumer goods 6%; partners--EC 53.5%, USSR and Eastern Europe 22.8%, less developed countries 15.4%, US 4.6%, other 3.7%

External debt: $18.0 billion, medium and long term (December 1990)

Industrial production: growth rate - 10.9% (1990)

Electricity: 21,000,000 kW capacity; 83,400 million kWh produced, 3,500 kWh per capita (1990)

Industries: metallurgy, machinery and equipment, petroleum, chemicals, textiles, wood processing, food processing, pulp and paper, motor vehicles, building materials

Agriculture: diversified, with many small private holdings and large combines; main crops--corn, wheat, tobacco, sugar beets, sunflowers; occasionally a net exporter of corn, tobacco, foodstuffs, live animals

Economic aid: donor--about $3.5 billion in bilateral aid to non-Communist less developed countries (1966-89)

Currency: Yugoslav dinar (plural--dinars); 1 Yugoslav dinar (YD) = 100 paras; note--on 1 January 1990, Yugoslavia began issuing a new currency with 1 new dinar equal to 10,000 YD

Exchange rates: Yugoslav dinars (YD) per US$1--13.605 (January 1991), 11.318 (1990), 2.876 (1989), 0.252 (1988), 0.074 (1987), 0.038 (1986), 0.027 (1985); note--as of January 1991 the new dinar is linked to the German deutsche mark at the rate of 9 new dinars per 1 deustche mark

Fiscal year: calendar year

NOTE: The information regarding Yugoslavia on this page is re-published from the 1991 World Fact Book of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Yugoslavia Economy 1991 information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Yugoslavia Economy 1991 should be addressed to the CIA.