U.S. Mapping An Attack on V iet Inflation: U.S. Mapping Attack On V ietnam Inflation
The Johnson Administration is moving quietly on several fronts to curtail a worrisome inflation in Vietnam that could grow bigger next year as American troop strength there expands.</br></br>One basic drive will be directed toward limiting the amount of dollars that U.S. soldiers will be allowed to convert into piastres for spending in Vietnam. Both voluntary incentives and mandatory ceilings on conversion are expected to be used.</br></br>Û¢ Forcing American military and contractors to reduce their dependence on Vietnamese manpower and supplies by purchasing more See INFLATE, A7, Col. 1 Û¢	Making greater efforts to break up congestion in the port of Saigon by short-circuiting importersÛª comfortable and profitable practices. A White House mission that includes economist Robert R. Nathan left Wednesday morning foi* a two-week study of this and other questions in Vietnam.</br></br>Implicit in all these moves is the prospect that U.S. troop strength in Vietnam, now about 297,000, will be boosted to slightly more than 400,000 by July, 1967. This will increase the total of free-and-easy spending by the GI which, combined with direct war expenditures by the U.S. and Vietnamese governments, constitutes the basic engine of inflation in an economy as poor as VietnamÛªs.</br></br>In the second quarter of this year, the cost of living in Vietnam skyrocketed at an annual rate of 74 per cent over 1965 levels, according to Vietnamese government data. As recently as 1964 and early 1965, the increase in the cost of livingwas only about 3.5 per cent a year.