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YUGOSLAVIA: Dinar Devalued

1 minute read
TIME

Marshal Tito’s government took a step toward making its money honest. It announced last week that the Yugoslav dinar, pegged at a phony rate of 50 to $1 while its free market value dropped as low as 700 to $1, was being devalued to a rate of 300 to $1. The cut came after two months of conference with a visiting mission of the 5O-nation International Monetary Fund, which advised Yugoslavia that its best chance of trading with the West would come from cleaning up its currency.

The devaluation was one more indication that Communist Marshal Tito, while still revering Das Kapital as a Bible, is not using it as his only economics textbook. The Tito regime has recently loosened the government’s rigid control over the Yugoslav economy, putting many state-run enterprises on a profit & loss basis.

As soon as the government figured out its budget on the new exchange rate, it announced a deficit of $189 million. Economic Czar Boris Kidric thereupon cheekily told Parliament that “we have a moral right” to expect the West (i.e., the U.S.) to make it up, “because we are exposed to more difficulties than any other country in Europe today.”

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