Matters of state--such as defense, foreign affairs, education, and welfare--usually associated with the central government of any country are handled by individual ministries and are overseen by the Council of Ministers. In addition to such affairs of state, however, various ministries, as well as the council itself, are charged with administering the country's entire economy, as is the case in other communist-ruled states. In mid-1973 eleven ministries out of a total of twenty-two dealt exclusively with economic matters. In addition, the State Planning Committee, the chairman of which holds ministerial rank, is of great importance in the overall economic structure. The economic ministries control virtually every aspect of the country's economy. The goals of nationalization of all industry and collectivization of agriculture were achieved early in the communist era, and the efforts of the party-government ever since have been toward increased efficiency. In Bulgaria the quest for greater production has led to ever greater centralization of control. In the early 1970s this quest has brought about the reorganization of industry wherein industrial enterprises have been grouped into huge trusts at the same time that collective and state farms have been similarly grouped into so-called agroindustrial complexes. The consolidation of agriculture into extremely large complexes, begun in 1970, was intended to raise productivity through concentration of effort, specialization of production, and increased control by the central government. The reorganization is a long-range program that is expected to be completed by 1980, at which time authorities predict that farm incomes will have risen to equal industrial incomes and, because agricultural enterprises will be run just like factories, the social differences between peasants and workers will have been eliminated. By 1973 results of the reorganization that had already occurred were mixed, and it was still too early to assess the long-range value of the agroindustrial complexes. In the industrial sector the consolidation of various enterprises into trusts was undertaken in the early 1970s for the same reasons that the agroindustrial complexes were formed, that is, greater efficiency through concentration, specialization, and increased control. Bulgarian industrial growth since World War II had been remarkable, considering particularly the inadequate base of skilled labor and natural resources in a country that had been predominantly agricultural. Bulgaria's need for raw materials, machinery, and technological assistance during its long period of industrialization and the Soviet Union's willingness to supply them accounted in large measure for the extremely close economic ties between the two countries. Because the growth rate had begun to slow toward the end of the 1960s, the BKP decided to try a massive reorganization of the economic structure as a remedy for the situation.