Chaitanya Kalbag

MANILA, April 29, Reuter – The Soviet Union’s interest in joining the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is part of Moscow’s move to restructure its economy, a senior official said. 

“The ADB’s major field of cooperation with its members bears a relation to Soviet efforts to restructure the economy aimed at expanding our export base and can complement it,” Oleg Mozhaiskov, deputy managing director of the USSR State Bank, told Reuters in an interview. 

Mozhaiskov is one of two Soviet observers attending the ADB’s three-day annual meeting in Manila. 

Alexander Lushokov, a counsellor in the Soviet Embassy in Manila, said last week the Soviet Union hoped to join the 47-member bank. ADB officials say they have not received a formal application. 

Mozhaiskov said, “You know that the political decision (to join) has been adopted in the sense that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already expressed a positive attitude.” 

Asked about comments by ADB officials who said the U.S. and Japan may combine to resist Soviet membership, Mozhaiskov said, “I am not a politician. I am an economist, and from that point of view I wouldn’t like to foresee any difficulties.” 

Mozhaiskov said any decision to exclude Moscow would be motivated by political or ideological considerations that had nothing to do with the economic interests of Asian countries. 

He said the Soviet Union has underdeveloped regions in its Asiatic part and if there were projects that were beneficial for both the Soviet Union and the region, “I wouldn’t exclude why the loans of the ADB should not serve this purpose.” 

“I see (the Soviet Union) mainly as a donor country, certainly, but I would like to our participation as full-fledged because our economic problems in a sense are very much the same as many countries in this region,” he said. 

Mozhaiskov said the restructuring of the Soviet economy was aimed at broadening its export base. “The situation of Soviet exports is unhappy in the sense that the bulk of the export receipts comes from energy resources, some commodities, some raw materials and semi-finished goods,” he said. 

“But taking the picture in general I would say that the structure of the Soviet exports does not correspond to the industrial capacity of the Soviet economy. 

“One of the main tasks in the external field is to integrate the Soviet economy and industry into a wider landscape of economic cooperation,” he said.