Manufacturers Consider Production Barriers

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30469, 17 June 1964, Page 14

Manufacturers Consider Production Barriers

Before New Zealand could develop an efficient export industry, it had to “get rid of the garbage first,” said Mr' J. K. Dobson at a meeting of the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association council. ■ ’Many disincentives could be abolished. The greatest was the procedure’ manufacturers had to go through before they could export. “It is cluttered up, tied up, bound up with everything,” he said. “You complete forms on regulations. You get information on these ‘regulations: Half of the regulations we don’t understand, and we get an opinion on them, and there are .10 opinions oh one regulation.” To maintain existing business took executives, at least eight hours a day, Mr Dobson said.

Two major disincentives to those going into the export field were land tax and death duties. ■ About £Bm a year was' returned from death duties. If they were abolished, a far greater sum would be returned internally, and that in turn would increase .overseas earnings. “We should decide what are the disincentives to us,” he said. . ’ Mr R. H. Stewart said that simple solutions were needed at government level. Death duties could be removed. Risk-taking was something the Government should be prepared to do. Mr J. W. Overton, the Federated Fanners representative on the council, said that death duties were a bugbear. He promised full support from the farmers’ organisations.

The council agreed to ask

the industrial promotion committee to compile a list of disinbentives to production for home and overseas. markets. It also decided to ask the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation and New Zealand Federated Farmers to consider taking up with the Government the question of death duties.