More Consumer Goods Stressed in Soviet Plan

The Communist Party on Wednesday announced a 15-year industrial program calling for ambitious increases in the output and quality of consumer goods and services over.

The program, published in the party daily newspaper Pravda, called for increases in production of all consumer goods, such as shoes and color televisions, and services ranging from cafeterias to airplane travel.

It said the increases would be accomplished by improving the “organization” of industry and the technological level of Soviet factories, but did not provide many details on how this would be carried out.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has repeatedly called for boosts in production and quality of consumer goods as part of his general drive for economic reform.

But he also has said the Kremlin does not view the Soviet Union as a “consumer society.”

‘Basic Improvement’

Overall, production of non-food consumer items should be 1.3 times greater in 1990 than in 1985, and 1.7 times greater by 2000, the party said.

In 1985, it said, Soviet light industry produced $100 billion worth of consumer goods. By the year 2000, that figure should rise to $170 billion, the party said.

In the Pravda article, the party complained that the quality of everyday goods and services is not high enough and called for “basic improvement of the quality and assortment of articles, of their technological and aesthetic level and their reliability in operation.”

It said that the party envisioned a “significant” increase in production of fabric -- always in short supply and sold at high prices -- and of clothing, shoes and technical services such as television repair.

Most of the report, covering three pages of Pravda, was devoted to lists of various kinds of goods and services and the amounts by which they should be increased between 1986 and 2000.

Radio production should increase to at least 11.2 million units per year by 1990, for example, and color televisions to at least 6.7 million.