More Production Advocated in Britain

Grey River Argus, 4 June 1948, Page 3

More Production Advocated in Britain

LONDON, June 2. The President of the Board of Trade, Mr Harold Wilson, told tne Textile Institute conference that more production was needed, not only to meet the export targets but so that clothing rationing could be abolished. He said that some textile areas held the view, which lie did not share, that when the 1948 targets were reached, there was little iu» ther to go before rationing would be abolished. He added that the textile .industries could go ahead without fear of over-producjon. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, told a press conference that the March and April import figures were not good ?.i--tnough the rise in exports was good news. “No satisfaction can be drawn from the state of affairs in which the visible results of our efforts tcclose the gap are so slow to appear,” he said. The figures for the first four months of 1948 showed a quite substantial increase in the United Kingdom imports from the sterling area. Tins was part of'the process of switch-ng British purchases from dollar to non-_ dollar sources There was also the rise in the exports, which, while .satisfactory, was not as large as that in imports, so that the balance in Britain’s favou--was £18,000,000 less, but Britain had a surplus in trade, with the sterling area, though this was now running at the half-yearly rate u: £15,000,000 less than had been the forecast. If on balance the import prices continued to rise ,and export prices to lag further behind them, the Govrnment would have to re-examT<* tiie import programmes. It was fortunate that Britain’s trading arrangements within the sterling area gave her a valuable time margin in which to make decisions in nn orderly way, so as to cause the minimum upset to industries and living standards. . Unless there was a marked fall in import prices, he thought, judging the present world price trend, that Britain was unlikely to achieve an overall balance of trade by tne end of 1948.