2 NOVEMBER 1991, Page 34

The Odling-Smee plan. . .

JOHN Odling-Smee is the Treasury man- darin who was borrowed by the Interna- tional Monetary Fund and is now its Soviet expert. What to do about a government whose revenues are only half what it spends? Simple, Mr Odling-Smee says: the citizens must drink vodka — proverbially the quiCk way out of Moscow. Fiscal policy, he argues, went astray when Mikhail Gorbachev tried to make his coun- try sober up. Vodka sales collapsed, and so did the revenue from the duty on vodka — one of the government's best earners. Note the inguenity of the Odling-Smee plan. If it puts the public finances to rights, everyone can relax, and if it does not, everyone will be relaxed already.