No Real Shortage of Food, High Soviet Official Declares

The barren shelves of Soviet grocery stores are the result of a crumbling distribution system and panic buying, not any real shortage of food, a senior Soviet official was quoted as saying today.

“The amount of food in the Soviet Union has not diminished,” Tass quoted First Deputy Premier Lev Voronin as saying on Soviet television late Tuesday.

The central government is toughening sanctions against those who fail to meet food delivery orders, he said.

Many regions of the Soviet Union have halted shipments of food and consumer goods to other parts of the country as a means of dealing with the collapsing Soviet economy.

Rather than obey the central government’s demands for food deliveries to the cities at state prices they consider too low, producers are trading food directly for other scarce supplies wherever they find them.

Economic reforms have also freed farmers to sell more of their produce at market prices, leaving less for delivery at dirt-cheap prices to the state stores.

Soviet and German officials have set up task forces to arrange transport and distribution of emergency food aid for Soviet consumers facing barren shelves, a high-ranking German official said today.

Horst Teltschik, top foreign policy aide to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, told reporters that he is to meet with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to discuss food aid as well as longer-term economic cooperation.

Kohl has promised massive emergency aid to protect Soviet citizens from hunger during the winter. German Red Cross officials have already begun receiving contributions for the Soviets.