Council for Economic Mutual Assistance

Communist Party and government delegates from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union attended a meeting in Moscow of the Council for Economic Mutual Assistance (COMECON) on June 7 and 8, 1962. It was reported that the delegations had decided to support the proposal for an international trade conference which would embrace all countries without discrimination. The delegations also expressed their desire for the further expansion of foreign trade with capitalist countries. A communiqué issued at the end of the meeting said that the Council agreed that its main activity in the immediate future would be coordination of the long-term and current economic plans of the COMECON countries. The meeting deemed it necessary that special attention be paid to: the speeding up of specialization and cooperation of production, the maximum development of raw material, fuel, and power supplies, the necessity of beginning in the near future the coordination of principal capital investments in the extracting and processing branches of industry, and the further widening and deepening of coordination of scientific and technical research. It was agreed that, whenever necessary, the members would set up joint enterprises, joint scientific research centers, and joint projecting and designing offices. During the course of the meeting the Mongolian government was admitted as a member of COMECON.