Australia Assured Of Needed Capital Imports

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31096, 27 June 1966, Page 10

Australia Assured Of Needed Capital Imports

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) MELBOURNE, June 26.

Australia could count on an inflow of overseas capital fully adequate to its needs over the next 10 years, an economist of the Chase Manhattan Bank, New York (Dr. W. Butler) said in the quarterly review of the American Institute of Public Affairs. Dr. Butler believes that the United States will be called on to supply at least 6000 m dollars of Australia’s estimated requirements of 80,000 m dollars of new capital over the next. 10 years, assuming that Australia will show continued hospitality to foreign investment. The current decade seems certain to be the greatest era of international investment in history, in spite of recent measures by the United States and Britain to restrict export of capital. An important but not the only reason is the global extension of giant corporations with scientific and technological knowledge. About 200 multi-national corporations account for fourfifths of United States overseas direct private investment.

The United States itself receives large amounts of capital from abroad.

Although American investment in Canada has been criticised, Canadians own

twice as much a head of population in the United States as the Americans do in Canada. Canada seems to have come around to the view, says the article, that ownership is not so important as the rate at which standards of living are improving and resources being developed.

The total of world overseas investment is now estimated at about 150,000 m dollars. Of this, the United States has contributed about 100,000 m and Britain 30,000 m dollars. The main directions in which American investment went in 1964 were:—Common Market countries, 900 m; Canada, 750 m; Britain, 400 m; Australia, 186 m, and Japan, 108 m dollars.