GUARANTEED PRICE

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 143, 13 March 1939, Page 11

GUARANTEED PRICE

Last Season’s Fruit Crop FEDERATION STATEMENT The statement, contained in a Press Association message from Christchurch last Thursday, that in the opinion of members of the New Zealand Fruitgrowers’ Federation the Government’s guaranteed price to fruit-growers for last season’s crop has created an embarrassing situation for the Minister of Marketing, Mr. Nash, is the subject of comment by the general manager of the federation, Mr. A. Osborne. "This organization,” says Mr. Osborne. “dissociates itself entirely from the statements made and further desires to point out that the payout for 1937 did not aggregate £40,000.”

The message from Christchurch stated: No ofiicial information is available concerning the amount of subsidy to be paid or the expenditure involved. Payment is expected at the end of the* month, and estimates of the amount support the prediction made early in the season last year that the Government would be faced with a payout of more than £200,000, a sum greatly in excess of anything expected by the Minister. The federation officials base (heir estimate on apples only because it is believed that other varieties of fruit were sold at an average price in excess of the Government’s guarantee of 5/2 a bushel f.o.b. They believe that about two million cases of apples were sold on the internal market at an average price of 3/- a case. That means a subsidy payment of 2/2 a case compared with the 1937 season when the subsidy scheme was inaugurated. Last season's payout is bound to be exceptionally heavy. In 1937 the amount of the subsidy was slightly over 4d. a case and aggregated about £40,090. Last season, however, there was a bumper crop, and half-way through the marketing period there was a glut.