FARMING INTERESTS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 58, 4 December 1946, Page 3

FARMING INTERESTS

TRADE WITH BRITAIN STATEMENT BY FEDERATION According to the trade and economic journals received from Britain, the United Kingdom has to increase her exports to 75 per cent, in volume above the pre-war level, if she is to maintain the same volume of imports as she had before the war. That statement was recently made by Sir Stafford Cripps, Piesident of the Board of Trade, at a Production Drive Conference in Edinburgh. Britain should, said Sir Stafford Cripps, have more imports and not less if she was to maintain her standard of living. She had to import more raw materials to enable her to export 75 per cent, more manufactured goods. Further, the loans she had obtained from America and Canada and the interest on them, had to be paid off and that could only be done by the goods she imported. Before the war Britain’s export trade was 20 per cent, of that of the whole world. If she was to inciease it by 75 per cent., as she must, it would mean 35 per cent, of the total world exports on a pre-war basis. Such a percentage was not possible, said Sir Stafford, so that Britain s only way was to encourage the growth of the export trade of the whole world. If that could be increased by 75 per cent, then Britain’s pre-war share would give the volume of exports she needed. The moral for New Zealand in Sir Stafford Cripps statement is obvious. He forecasts no diminution but an increase in imports and that means imports of food, an increase in which New Zealand will share. For the year ending December 31, 1945, Britain bought from New Zealand goods to the value of £58,400,000. We bought in the same period from Britain goods to the value of only £19,700,000. Sir Stafford Cripps has said that Britain must increase her exports—no easy task to keep that flow at the level essential to enable her to import all the food and raw materials she needs. It must be remembered too, that the kind of goods Britain can export is an important factor in her trade development. Coal, for instance, was once one of her chief exports. Today coal exports are almost negligible. There are other exports, too, from which it is impossible to get the required 75 per cent, increase. It follows, therefore, that in other goods Britain must achieve a much greater increase than 75 per cent. If Britain is to buy an increasing quantity of produce from New Zealand, as she wants to do, or even to maintain her present volume of purchases, New Zealand must buy more goods from Britain. Under the particular circumstances of Brtain’s trade today, New Zealand must not discriminate in her purchases. Sir Stafford Cripps has made the position perfectly clear. Two-way trade with Britain must be maintained freely—no selection, no undue controls to provide a sheltered haven of production for New Zealand interests, but free purchase of British goods to allow Britain’s continued purchase of New Zealand produce. This resolution passed at the annual conference of the Federation crystallises New Zealand’s responsibilities in the matter. “That Federated Farmers, realising that Great Britain is our chief market for primary produce, urges all farmers, individually and collectively, to give strict preference to British products when purchasing requirements from overseas.”