ECSC financial report for the year 1966

Abstract

This financial report relates to the calendar year 1966, the fourteenth year of the European Coal and Steel Community's financial operations. Capital expenditure in the Community's coal and steel industries during the last year can as yet only be estimated on the basis of the forecasts submitted by enterprises for the survey carried out on January 1, 1966(1) and of the major projects which they subsequently announced to the High Authority. These estimates indicate that capital expenditures are likely to be in the neighbourhood of 280 million and 20 million units of account for the coal and iron-ore sectors respectively. These are very close to the figures re-corded in 1964 and 1965 (when capital investment was very much lower than in previous years), which were 291 and 279 million units of account for coal and 24 and 26 million for iron ore. Between 1961 and 1964 investment in the iron and steel industry was very high, averaging over 1,000 million units of account a year and reaching a • record of 1,500 million in 1963. The downturn first noted in 1964 became more marked in 1965, when effective investment fell below 1,000 million units of account (935 million). The current estimates of iron and steel enter-prises total about 920 million units of account, which is roughly the same as the figure for the previous year