Today the Korean people are stepping up the advance for implementing the first year task of the new five-year plan under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK). Now all the people are full of confidence in victory and high enthusiasm after they were provided with the scientific path for bringing about substantial progress in socialist economic construction.
The accomplishment of the new five-year plan presupposes perfect prerequisites for its implementation. The respected Comrade
The respected Comrade
"The Cabinet and other state and economic organs should decisively improve their economic planning and guidance."
The first key prerequisite for implementing the new five-year plan is for the Cabinet-country's economic headquarters-to properly enforce the Cabinet-responsibility system and the Cabinet-centered system for the economic work.
The Cabinet is an economic headquarters exercising the economic rights of the country, and the Cabinet-responsibility system and the Cabinet-centered system constitute the core of the nation's economic system. Just as the operation and command given by the headquarters determine the victory or defeat of a battle in the military affairs, the function and role of the Cabinet as the economic organizer play a decisive action in the economic affairs of the country.
The Cabinet-responsibility system and the Cabinet-centered system are the centralized economic work system and order in which the Cabinet takes direct charge of the overall economic work of the country and all the problems are concentrated on the Cabinet for settlement in a unified way under its supervision. Socialist economy will witness proper operation and development only when the Cabinet fully performs its role as the economic command by setting forth scientific economic development strategy guided by the Party's policies, tightening operation and command for its implementation and establishing strict discipline and order for the implementation of all the economic work under its unified guidance.
The present condition affected by grim international situation and manifold subjective and objective factors hampering the economic construction demands that the Cabinet properly enforce the Cabinet-responsibility system and the Cabinet-centered system in order to carry out the new five-year plan.
It is one of key tasks of the new five-year plan to put the metal industry and chemical industry on a normal footing by concentrating investment on them and to normalize production in all fields of the national economy based on them.
The overall economy can advance with vitality along the normal track only when the economic potential of the country is not dispersed without taking it into account but concentrated on increasing to the maximum the iron and steel production and the production capacity of chemical goods, key links in the whole chain of the economic development, and also when careful and resolute economic operation and command are provided for strengthening organic ties among key industries. The state investment and economic technological measures should precede in order to increase the production of people's consumer goods by solidifying the material and technological foundation of the agricultural field and by ensuring the satisfactory supply of raw and other materials to the light industrial field. This can be possible only when the Cabinet fulfills its responsibility and role.
This proves that the proper enforcement of the Cabinet-responsibility system and the Cabinet-centered system by the Cabinet becomes a key prerequisite of priority importance to implementing the five-year plan.
The next important prerequisite to implementing the new five-year plan is to powerfully push forward the work for strengthening the main lifeline of the national economy and ensuring its integrity, and to decisively improve the economic management.
Strengthening the main lifeline of the national economy and ensuring its integrity is a prerequisite for implementation of the new five-year plan.
Our national economy takes its fields and units and natural resources playing a leading role in the development of the overall economy as the major lever, and it is an integral economy, all the fields and units of which run as one and the same under the unified guidance of the state. Proceeding from the characteristics of our national economy, it becomes vital requirement for economic development and a key prerequisite to implementation of the new five-year plan to strengthen its main lifeline and ensure its integrity.
Only when the state ensures thorough-going grip on and unified one-line management of key industrial fields, the backbone of the national economy, and of natural resources, can it concentrate economic power on the key industrial fields to keep afloat key links and thus shore up the economy as a whole. Only when all the economic units conduct their economic performance under the unified control of the state, is it possible for the national economy to fully display its specific features and advantages as an integral whole.
The success or failure of the new five-year economic plan for the state economic development depends on how economic management is improved. What becomes a sure guarantee for the successful implementation of the five-year plan is for the state to realize unified management of products on the principle of enhancing its function as economic organizer and making people actually benefit from the results of the economic work, and also for each field and unit to rearrange and adjust the economic management system and method in the direction of tapping internal potentiality to the maximum.
The issue of strengthening the main lifeline of the national economy and ensuring its integrity is not an issue pertaining to the Cabinet only. This can be possible only when all the units, state economic guidance institutions and industrial establishments, which have involved in the economic work, act in concert.
It is essential to make all economic units affiliate themselves to the Cabinet and to strictly abide by the unified regulations and orders of the state.
Economic organization and command should be enhanced so that different fields ensure ties and cooperation for production with industrial establishments on the principle of consolidating the independence of the national economy and ensuring robust growth of production.
In order to revitalize the overall economy thoroughly based on one's own internal potential, it is imperative for all the economic units to smoothly realize cooperative production and various economic and technical ties under a single command. If key fields and natural resources of the economy are dispersed for separate operation, it can never be possible to strengthen the independence of economy nor ensure its revitalization.
The completion of economic management methods that are suited to the actual conditions of the country and which can also prove optimal as well as the introduction of trial methods under test and experience gained by successful units would provide a substantial guarantee for the implementation of the plan. Improving planning and the proper utilization of economic leverages like finance, monetary circulation and price become important conditions for revitalizing the overall economy and ensuring its rational management.
Another prerequisite to the implementation of the new five-year plan is to actively propel the normal production, technical updating and local procurement of raw and other materials by dint of science and technology.
Science and technology are locomotive driving socialist construction and the main driving force for the development of the national economy. At present science and technology are main factors that pave a shortcut to economic development and lead the economy. It is the current trend and demand of the times to give definite precedence to the development of science and technology and ensure the overall socio-economic development by dint of their leading and traction activities.
Unless the development of science and technology is given precedence and economic work is carried out under a firm scientific and technological guarantee, newly-built factories and enterprises will not be able to operate on a normal footing nor display their ability. In the long run, the effectiveness of the funds spent will fall and the revitalization of the overall economy will be impossible.
The new five-year plan can not be guaranteed simply by increasing investment and improving economic management. Given the unfavorable external environment for economic construction and lack of fund and natural resources, only firm dependence on science and technology would ensure normal production, technical updating and local procurement of raw materials.
It is important to actively solve urgent scientific and technical problems pressing in implementing the new five-year plan for national economic development.
Important tasks facing the metal industrial field in the period for the five-year plan is to technically perfect the Juche iron production system, expand its capacity and drastically increase iron and steel production. The implementation of these tasks needs prior solution to scientific and technical problems for remodeling existing production processes of major iron works and steel plants with advanced technology, for building new energy-efficient iron blast furnace, expanding its production capacity, revitalizing iron ore production and using brown coal in the northern area for the pig iron production.
It also presents itself as a precondition for the priority development of science and technology to convert the structure of the chemical industry of the country into that of Juche industry relying on our own locally available raw materials and to considerably boost the production of chemical goods. The development of science and technology, and normalization of production, reconstruction and modernization, and local procurement of raw and other materials based on them are also essential for key industries like electricity, coal and machine and all other fields of the national economy in attaining the goals set in the new five-year plan.
What is of prime importance at present is to actively develop advanced cutting-edge technology which plays a key role in socio-economic development. Cutting-edge and core technology plays a crucial propelling action not only in the economy and social life but also in the development of science and technology. Active development of information technology, nano-technology, bio-engineering and other core ultra-modern technology and their application to the economic work mean making the most of the important power for the successful accomplishment of the new five-year plan and for the sustained development of the national economy as a whole.
The last prerequisite for the accomplishment of the new five-year plan is to direct the external economic activities to perfecting and reinforcing the foundation and potential of self-supporting national economy.
External economy holds a significant position in consolidating the independence and the foundation of the national economy.
Self-reliance and self-sustenance do not rule out external economic dealings. What we are opposed to is import addiction contending that without import economy can not run, not the external transaction itself. External economic dealings are imperative, given the differences in the endowment of natural resources, economic development, economic structure and science and technical development.
External economic transaction is one of important conditions for bolstering the independence of economy. The basic purpose of the external economic work is not economic exchange and pure money-making itself but is about bolstering the independence of national economy. The external economic transaction would help supplement resources and technology which are missing or insufficient, and reinforce porous parts with a view to solidifying the self-supporting economic foundation.
Important in successfully attaining the goal of new five-year plan is to direct the external economic work to rounding off and reinforcing the groundwork and potential of self-supporting national economy. The successful implementation of the goal enshrined in the five-year plan would be possible only when the external economic work is conducted on one's own initiative for the purpose of solving urgent problems for perfecting the foundation of metal industry, chemical industry and other key industries, revitalizing the overall economy, lowering the proportion of import in light industry and increasing the production of people's consumer goods.
Also important in making sure the external economic work focus on perfecting and reinforcing the groundwork of the self-standing national economy is to recover the unified trade system of the state and to establish strong discipline to ensure unified control and supervision over the trade activities and all other external economic activities. In socialist society external economic work is a link in the whole chain of the state economic work. It can not contribute to consolidating the foundation of the state economy if it is carried out separately by individual units and enterprises in their own interests.
Only when state economic institutions and trading units make the most of the innovative trade methods on their own initiative in the midst of ever-changing external atmosphere, can they do their share for the successful implementation of the new five-year plan.
The prerequisites to implementing the new five-year plan clarified by the respected Comrade
When the Cabinet and the state economic guidance organs secure and carry out the prerequisites in a substantial way, the goals and tasks set forth in the plan will be successfully carried out.
