The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) held its seventeenth session in Bucharest on December 74–20, 1962, attended by delegates from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. A communiqué stated that a permanent currency and finance commission had been set up under the Council to develop cooperation in those fields among COMECON member countries, that international specialization and “socialist division of labor” among members had increased, and that during the first nine months of 7962 over-all trade among member countries had risen by 15 percent and trade in machinery and industrial equipment by 24 percent. The communiqué noted that the COMECON countries were now largely self-sufficient in certain raw materials, manufactures, etc., notably lignite, hard coal, oil and oil products, fertilizers, grain, machinery and industrial equipment, and timber.