The Eighth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea set forth the new 5-year plan for the national economic development which had it as its goal to advance toward sustained economic growth and remarkable improvement of the people’s standard of living on the basis of the present situation and potentiality of the national economy.
The general orientation of the five-year plan for the national economic development is to lay solid foundations for reenergizing the overall national economy and improving the people’s standard of living by concentrating efforts on the main links in the whole chain of economic development.
The major tasks of the new five-year plan aim at focusing investment with the metal industry and chemical industry as key links so as to normalize production in all sectors of the national economy, consolidate the material and technical foundations of the agricultural field and supply enough raw and other materials to light industry for increased production of consumer goods.
Important in implementing the major tasks for the new five-year plan is to rationally enlist and make use of economic power of the country to the full so as to decisively put the metal and chemical industries, the two pillars supporting the economic construction, on a normal track, a reenergizing track. It is imperative to actively promote the practical economic reenergizing by strengthening the organic relations between the key industries including metal, chemical, power, coal, machine and mining industries in accordance with the specific character of the socialist economy, the collective economy. It is important in the agricultural field to put efforts into seed improvement, scientific farming, increased output in low-yielding fields, cultivation of new land and tideland reclamation, while pushing irrigation and mechanization of agriculture as an important strategic priority, and strengthen the state assistance to the rural economyto increase agricultural production. The light industrial field should normalize the production of consumer goods by tapping locally available resources for raw and other materials and recycle wastes and reinforcing the weak sectors and processes and setting up missing ones.
