vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #159 / Business / Reading article...

The decline in Primorye’s light industry continued last year with a 17.5 percent drop in output, to 40 billion rubles ($6.7 million), during the first nine months of 1997, compared to the same period the previous year.

Only two of the krai’s 16 light industrial enterprises managed to grow last year, said Svetlana Snagovskaya, head of light industry in the Krai Administration’s Committee for Industry. They are the Lesozavodsk Industrial Complex, which won a contract to make uniforms for security forces workers and the Vladivostok Porcelain Factory which received a substantial cash injection after changing ownership.

Primorye’s light industry consists principally of porcelain and pottery manufacture, textiles and shoe-making. But since 1990 output has fallen from 8 percent of the krai’s total output to little more than 0.25 percent today.