home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=90TT1015>
- <title>
- Apr. 23, 1990: Business Notes:Trade
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Apr. 23, 1990 Dan Quayle:No Joke
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 64
- Business Notes
- TRADE
- Ship Me a Pepsi, Please!
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> At first the deal sounds like a bad perestroika joke: How
- many bottles of Pepsi can a Soviet citizen buy with a merchant
- ship and a case of vodka? But the barter agreement that PepsiCo
- and the Soviet Union signed last week is worth a serious $3
- billion. In the largest deal ever struck with an American
- company, the Soviets will trade ships and spirits for expanded
- Pepsi production. The complex barter system was necessary
- because the ruble is not readily convertible to Western
- currency. PepsiCo, which currently produces 40 million cases of
- soft drinks in the U.S.S.R. each year, will more than double its
- number of bottling plants in the Soviet Union, from 24 to 50.
- The expansion will be financed by shipments of Stolichnaya vodka
- over the next ten years and the sale or lease of at least ten
- Soviet-built freighters and tankers.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-