Party Inspectors Assessing Production Facilities

The North Korean authorities have dispatched Central Party inspection teams to assess the state of production facilities at each factory enterprise in North Korea prior to the implementation of the ‘6.28 Policy’, the name for planned economic reform measures set to go into effect in October

A source from North Hamkyung Province revealed the information to Daily NK on the 23rd, explaining that the teams are made up of officials from the department of the State Planning Commission responsible for production facilities, their provincial equivalents and the Central Prosecutors Office. They are now in the process of assessing the production facilities at each factory enterprise.

The source said, “It’s a Central Party investigation of each factory enterprise before they bring in the new economic measures,” adding, “Because it’s an inspection of production facilities, managers in charge of those facilities have also been called in [by the inspection teams].”

Daily NK has obtained confirmation from other sources that the same types of assessment inspections are ongoing in both Hyesan in Yangkang Province and Shinuiju in North Pyongan Province.

The Central Party inspection teams are expected to follow-up their assessments by deciding what needs to be scrapped and what can be salvaged and reactivated, then reporting it all back to the State Planning Commission in order for decisions to be made on state investment.

The 6.28 Policy, or ‘On the establishing of a new economic management system in our own style’, should see the state making initial investments in industrial and agricultural facilities and inputs, then procuring production at market prices according to pre-set targets while allowing a percentage of target production plus any over-fulfillment to remain with the production unit for distribution and/or sale.