Export Competitiveness : British Experience in Eastern Europe

The purpose of the Enquiry, whose results are reported in this article, was to assess the competitiveness of British exports in five Eastern European countries—Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The Enquiry also investigated, more generally, the possibilities of promoting trade with these five countries. They were chosen because their trade with other countries is almost entirely the monopoly of specialised foreign trade corporations;(1) hence for each category of products there is only one buyer in each country. It is therefore possible to make some assessment of the competitiveness of British exports from the consumer end without an impossibly large number of interviews. These foreign trade corporations keep in touch with all the main suppliers both inside and outside the Comecon area, and are therefore in a good position to answer questions about the competitiveness of various Western countries' exports—questions concerning not only statistically quantifiable aspects (such as price) but also such matters as packaging and public relations.