WELLINGTON NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 16 April 1931, Page 5

WELLINGTON NEWS

RUSSIA’S FIVE YEAR PLAN. (Special Correspondent). WELLINGTON, April 14. From time to time we have, some vague references to the Russian FiveYear Plan, and opinions differ as to the success or otherwise of the plan, which aims at the entire re organisation of the national economy of Russia and aims at pushing that country to the front rank among the productive countries of the world. A minimum and a maximum scheme are provided for. The former will require £11.600,000.000 and the latter £8.300,000,000, the money to he spent in each case within the fivo-vear period. 1 he capitalistic world has been drawn upon for technical knowledge. Every single process or machine utilised, the tractor, the motor car. the harvester, the chemical fertiliser, the improved seed—all of which are to provide the material foundation for the revolution of agriculture, have been imported. There have been some remarkable achievements. Near Leningrad, Henry Font operates a factory with an annual output of 50,000 tractors. At Stalingrad on the Volga a Russian factory with a similar capacity has been opened on the same model, while at Restov-on-the-Don another factory described as the largest agricultural machinery factory in the world has been opened, Is this industrial activity in Russia a menace to the world? Addresses delivered by representatives of Chambers of Commerce of the world at the re* cent international convention of Chambers of Commerce in Paris indicate that "Russian Menace" is becoming an increasingly important factor In the world’s trade. Sir Arthur Balfour, Chairman of the British National Committee. gave the Convention some arresting facts. He said that the Russians had adopted a Tow standard of living with an underfed badly clothed population, and added to it forced labour. The Five-Year plan had probably made more progress than tbe outside world appreciated. Russia’s wheat supplies to Great- Britain in the period 1910 to 1914 were 13 per cent, of Great Britain’s total imports. Last season the figure had risen to 24 per cent., and more recently to 40 per cent. Last year’s imports amounted to 396,000.000 cwt. Fruit pulp was a new exporting industry from Russia. In 1929 Russia exported to .Great Britain 53,000 owt of strawberries and black currant pulp in barrels without sugar. Some of this was sold as low at Id per lb, which was less than the price at which the fruit could he picked for ~in. Great Britain. Of sugar and glucose 129,030 cwt were imported into Great Britain from Russia, out of a total for nine months of 459,000 cwt at about Is lid per o.wt below the general price. There had also been large importations from the same country of confectionary at low figures, and vast quantities of timber. Russia recently began to manufacture finished doors. It was expected that Russia would export to Great Britain between 8.000,000 and 7.000.000 doors in 1931. as these had already been contracted for at a price of 8s 6d each, whereas the United States and Swedish prices were about 8s 6d each.

It seems that inflation threatens the success of the Soviet plan. A leading Russian economist, Afr A. Yugor. writing in the official organ of the Social Democratic Party, says that inflation is an inevitable accompaniment of the Plan, and that its perilous consequences can only be averted radical modification of the industrial and agrarian “tempos” of the plan itself. The amount of paper money issued in the first two years of the Five-Year Plan was two and a half million times more, than the estimates for the entire five years. Air Yugor considers that the Soviet’s financial and currency system reflects more glaringly than anything else the impossibility of the realisation of the Plan. As funds did not become available in expected amounts from the “mechanism of prices.” nor from taxes and loans the Soviet Government, haltingly at first hut inevitably later, entered upon the road of mass inflation. This Russian economist considers that only two roads are now open, continued inflation or immediate bankruptcy. Tbe realisation of both the Five-Year Plan and a stable country is impossible.