Move Will Provide British Exporters With Big Incentive

Chronicle (Levin), 20 September 1949, Page 5

Move Will Provide British Exporters With Big Incentive

(N.Z.P.A. —

Reuter.

Copyrtght)

Received Tuesday, 9.30 a.m. LONDON, Sept. 19. Confidently facing more than 400 repor$ers, the Chancellor of the Exehequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, today defended the decision to devalue sterling. The reporters pelted him with a series of quick-fire questions, but Sir Stafford met them all with sharp and incisive answers. He ^sserted that by devaluing the pound he had proYided British exporters with the big incentive he had promised the Americans and Canadians in Washington.

The main points the Chancellor made were: — Firstly, that devaluation should produce an ultimate but not immediate increass in British experts to the dollar areas. Secondly, 'defence and social service funds would not be cut. Thirdly, he did not plan to socialise British exports ' and wholesale tradeg. Fourthly, he'had not asked the United States and Canada for | direct help in meeting the sterling balance obligations. Fifthly, he di'd not know when free convertibility would be attained. Asked whether the Government intended to take any more active steps to promote more imaginative selling by private firms in the dollar market, Sir Stafford replied: "We have not completely lost our faith yet in private enterprise, and I had to tell some of my friends in America who were pressing me to socialise the who'e of our export and wholesale trade that I was not prepared to go as far as they were yet." The Chancellor sai'd that the oil and shipping problems could not be settled during the Washington j talks "but would be Oxamined in I the light of the agreed analysis of a long-term problem." Sir Stafford said he would not introduce the Budgec before the normal time next April. In respcnse to a question, he said that British loans from the United States and Canada would be repayable at whatever rate of exchange existed when the loans became due.