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Cash-Poor Plants Idled

Textile plants in the central Russian city of Ivanovo, lacking cash for raw materials and wages, were at a virtual standstill Friday, Itar-Tass news agency said.


"Almost all textile plants in the Ivanovo region have stopped work and a 120,000-strong brigade of workers has gone on a collective holiday," it said.


"In conditions of chronic non-payments" by customers, "burdensome taxes and unreasonably high prices for raw materials and fuel, all enterprises have ended up without resources," it said.


Ivanovo, a city of 500,000 people, revolves around the textile industry.


The region's more than 50 mills once produced 25 to 30 percent of fabric in the former Soviet Union, using cotton from Central Asia. But production shrank by 40 percent in 1992 and another 12 percent in 1993.


"Real unemployment is more than 25 percent. Living standards have fallen below critical levels and society is on the verge of a social explosion," a local administrator told the news agency.


The government allocated 75 billion rubles ($37 million) of credits to Ivanovo in April to help buy raw materials, but local officials say they have not yet received the cash.

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