However, despite attempted remedial measures, Czechoslovak industry was lagging behind the West by the mid-1980s: it was energy-intensive, innovation and investment in new plant were insufficient, and labor productivity was low.
During the 1970s, Czechoslovakia had signed specialization and joint investment agreements with other Comecon members, committing the country to specific long-term obligations, in particular production branches (machine tools and railroad locomotives, for example), partly to ensure the inflow of energy and raw materials.
In 1985 the most important branches of industry in terms of the monetary value of their contribution to the economy were machinery, electrical engineering, metalworking, chemicals, asbestos, rubber, and ferrous metallurgy (including ore extraction).
In the 1980s, Czechoslovakia was — except for the Soviet Union — Eastern Europe's only builder of heavy-duty nuclear power equipment and was a joint supplier of such products to other Comecon members.
In the early and mid-1980s, as part of an effort to "restructure" the industrial economy, the government sought to reduce the relative importance of metallurgy within the industrial sector, cutting back particularly on such traditional products as pig iron, raw steel, and rolled ferrous products in favor of more profitable and less energy-intensive branches.
Laws introduced in 1971 (which went into effect in 1975) had granted limited powers and a degree of decentralization to the intermediate level of administration, positioned between ministries and production enterprises.