World : Soviet Consumers Promised Cuts

Soviet consumers today were promised cuts of between 10% and 30% on prices of important household goods in the new year.

Ivan Gorbachev, deputy chairman of the State Committee on Prices, was quoted by a weekly newspaper as saying the cuts will apply to cloth, appliances and other goods and that $165 million was allocated in the budget to fund them. Soviet authorities have pressed ahead with plans to make industry self-financing and more competitive by next year, but the implementation of price reforms appears to have been put off until the start of the 1990s.