based on Financial Times roport
A new Soviet system of intor-industrial pricos is to be introd— uced from next Jamary 1. Tho now prices will rofloct the real cost of itoms used in industry more accurately than do the present prices. This move on prices comes at a time whon the whole question of how best to stimulate the economy to produce those things which are most needod has once again been subjected to fairly widesproad public discussion. The ideas aired in the "profit motive’ controversy in the autumn of 1962 have once again been brought out into the opon. One of the leading advocates of the “profit motive," Professor I, Malyshev, has been writing in the press. He now onjoys the authority of his official post as deputy head of the Contral Statistical Administration of the USSR.
It is now generally admitted that the present Soviet system of sotting gross output (whether moasured in woight or in roubles) as the chiof criterion of industrial success, is unsatisfactory, Under this system, there is a tendency for factories to produce unwanted goods and to disregard costs (in the past a saucepan factory has been quoted which produced only large, heavy saucepans when weight was the criterion, and small expensive ones when price was). The dispute now going on is about what systom should replace the gross output method, A Tatar official, ‘ Mr. Tabeev, first secretary of tho Tatar regional committoe of tho C.Pe, has propasod a criterion..called "normative value of processing". Under this system a factory has a target for the amount of its own work that has to bo put into production in a given poriod to be,called added valuce