OMRI DAILY DIGEST
No. 242, 14 December 1995

HUNGARY DEBATES NATO REFERENDUM. The parliament's Constitutional
Committee on 13 December ruled that the parliament is not obliged to
approve a referendum on Hungary's NATO membership called for by more
than 100,000 signatories, Hungarian media reported. The
extraparliamentary communist Party of the Workers organized the
signature drive, which, according to the constitution, should oblige the
parliament to approve a referendum on the matter. The coalition parties
have not supported the idea, saying it is too early for such a
referendum. The committee said that it will regard the petition drive as
an initiative expressing an opinion and that the parliament will decide
on whether to approve a referendum. -- Zsofia Szilagyi

HUNGARY PRIVATIZES OIL, TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES. The eight-day
issuance of shares in MOL, the Hungarian Gas and Oil Company, on the
Budapest Stock Exchange closed on 13 December with an oversubscription
of 45 million forints ($0.3 million) for the 3.2 billion forint package,
Hungarian newspapers reported. Domestic private investors accounted for
more than 1.7 billion forints, while foreign private investors invested
1.5 billion forints. In other news, Vilaggazdasag reported on 14
December that, despite a week of intensive negotiations, no agreement
has been reached on the sale of a majority stake in the
telecommunications company Matav to its minority owner MagyarCom, a
consortium of Deutsche Telekom and Ameritech. The report contradicts a
Financial Times report on 13 December according to which the State
Privatization and Holding Company struck a deal with MagyarCom on
increasing the consortium's stake from 30.3% to 60-70%. -- Zsofia
Szilagyi

[As of 12:00 CET]

Compiled by Jan Cleave


Elnezest az esetleges kisbetukert, de az eredeti szoveg csupa
nagybetuvel volt irva, amit at kellett cserelnem.

Buchwald Amy

*****************************************************************

date=12/13/95
type=yearend report
number=5-31938
title=95: East Euro Economies
byline=Barry Wood
dateline=Prague
content=
voiced at:  12/13

Intro:  While Eastern European Economies grew faster than those
of Western Europe in 1995, the gap in living standards between
the two halves of Europe is not narrowing.  V-o-A's Barry Wood
reports on the income gap in 1995, six-years after the iron
curtain was lifted.

Text:  There are now groups of economies in the east.  There are
the fastest reformers -- the four countries closest to the west,
likely to be the first to enter the European Union.  They are
Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.

Then there are those economies that are growing not so robustly
as the fast reformers.  This group includes the three Baltic
States, Romania, Albania, and Bulgaria and the five republics
that used to comprise Yugoslavia.  A third group includes
Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Moldova, and other countries that were
once part of the Soviet Union.

An economist at Deutsche Bank Research in Frankfurt, Otto Storf,
says the gap between the fast reformers and Bulgaria and Romania
is widening.

                       /// Storf act ///

         I think they are far, far behind the advanced countries
         like Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic and
         Slovakia.  The Baltic States and even Croatia is in a
         better situation than these two countries.

                         /// End act ///

The International Labor Organization recently published
statistics showing wage earners in most eastern economies are
falling further behind inflation.  Health care workers in Russia
and Ukraine have seen their wages decline by 60-percent, to about
80-dollars per month.  The I-L-O says health workers are paid
only 25-percent of the 70-dollar a month national average wage in
Bulgaria.  Real wages in Ukraine have fallen 70-percent since
1990.

The Geneva-based economic commission for Europe has released
figures showing a widening gap between east and west.  It says
the richest eastern economy, Slovenia, has a per-capita income
below that of Greece, the poorest member state in the  European
Union.

The commission study says half of all households in Bulgaria and
Romania are living below the poverty level.  This compares to one
in five households below the poverty line in the European Union.
Half of the homes in Romania have no piped water, bathroom, or
flush toilet.  Access to a telephone, while improving in the
east, is far behind the west.

Even optimistic economists predict it will take three generations
for the fastest growing eastern economies to catch up with the
living standards in the west.  For there to be any catching up at
all, the eastern economies have to consistently grow faster than
their western counterparts.   (Signed)

neb/bdw/rae

13-Dec-95 1:11 pm est (1811 utc)
nnnn

source: Voice of America