BURMA: Bad Swap

"Anybody who goes for barter deals is out of his mind," said Burma's ex-Premier U Nu—and he should know. Burma's Rangoon docks were still overflowing with the bartered Iron Curtain cement it could not use (TIME, May 21). Originally Burma thought that it had at least got a good price for its surplus rice—only to find that the Soviet Union was upping the prices of the goods it sent in exchange. All this was demoralizing enough. Last week Burma came face to face with another unsettling discovery: it really had no surplus rice problem to begin with.

Burma's rice crop...

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