Eastern European nations will be forced to slow down their imports of goods from the West significantly between now and 1980, Mr. David Ashby, senior economist for Bankers Trust Company in London, said earlier in the year at a conference on trade with Eastern Europe.

“Western exports to Eastern Europe will grow more slowly during the next three to four years than in the period from 1971 to 1975,” said Mr. Ashby. “The message from the 1976-80 plans of the seven members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON)—Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the U.S.S.R.—is that because of the large deficits incurred in trade with the West in the past, and the difficulty of expanding exports while economic growth in the West continues at such a slow pace, the expansion of imports from the West must be slowed down significantly.

“If the recovery of the western economy moves ahead rather faster than now appears likely, Eastern Europe will find it easier to expand its exports to us, and the slow-down in trade would be less marked,” said Mr. Ashby. “Meanwhile, it is in the interest of the West to facilitate the expansion of COMECON hard-currency exports, so that the COMECON nations can import as much as possible from the West.”

Mr. Ashby pointed out that until 1972 the West’s trade surplus with COMECON countries was of fairly modest proportions, averaging about $500 million. But in 1972 their deficit trebled and by 1975 it had increased to more than $9,000 million. Last year it fell slightly to about $8,500 million.

Because of the rapid build-up of Eastern Europe’s bank debt in recent years, the commercial banks were now adopting a rather more cautious attitude towards the extension of new credit to East European borrowers, Mr. Ashby noted. “It would certainly seem that Eastern Europe has much less room for manoeuvre on the foreign trade front now than it did several years ago,” he said.

“The big projects launched in the early 1970s to expand domestic industries and improve consumer supplies are heavily reliant on imports. Yet many banks in the West have justified the continued generally high credit rating of most East European borrowers by arguing that these planned economies are more closely controlled than Western free-enterprise or mixed economies and therefore that their managers can impose restrictions on non-essential imports or cut back on consumer spending so as to meet given balance of payments targets.”

The Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Economic Development will grant four million dinars ($13.6 million) to Gambia under the terms of an agreement between the two sides. The money will be used for financing road construction projects, a spokesman for the fund said.