BRITISH TRADE

Hokitika Guardian, 29 July 1931, Page 2

BRITISH TRADE

FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. QUIET PERIOD ON STOCK exchange. (United Press Association— By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) LONDON, July 25. For the greater part of the week the •Stock Exchange was in a state of suspended animation pending ffcho Interna* tional Conference, but no marked downward drift occurred till the conference results were announced, As earlier cables show, nobody was very enthusiastic regarding the conference in any country, but yesterday there was increasing recognition in the City that though the scope of the conference's recommendations was limited, they were helpful and businesslike and should, together with the reparations moratorium, be sufficient to enable Germany to restore confidence in the mark and to get her financial machinery into smooth working order. British funds naturally suffered a sharp relapse owing to France’s heavy gold withdrawals and the consequent rise in •the Bank rate. DOMINION STOCKS. Dominion stocks were practically unaffected. The beginning of the week saw a .tendency in Australians to improve slowly on hopes that Mr Lang would agree to come into line in the matter of the admission of debt liabilities The only effect of the international crisis was to check this process. Later in the week weakness in giltedge ds developed. The seriousness of ’Britain’s trade slump was most strikingly shown by the effect on railways. Tn the first half of the present year the four big railway groups’ gross receipts showed a drop cf £8,500,000. This followed upon a big traffic decrease in the • preceding years, and there is still little hope of their earning power increasing. The present values of home railway stocks are £52,500,000 below last year’s prices. WORLD TRADE. •Some of the most significient facts in •the world trade situation were cited this week by Sir Arthur Balfour when speaking at Sheffield. He expressed j the opinion that the American slump was the most momentous feature of the world’s troubles. He pointed out what will generally appear surprising, namely, that America’s exports are fating and that Germany’s are rising, and that per capita of her population Britain is still the greatest exporting nation, her trade being £l2 15s a head compared with Germany, which is £7 10s »3d, France> £6 3s 2d, and the United •States £5 10s 6d. The two latter show a declining tendency. But one of the most important facts that. Sir Arthur •Balfour emphasised was the wide gap that still exists between the wholesale and retail prices, for, while the former have fallen 20 per cent, the latter only show a decline of 5 per cent. “General world prosperity,” he said, “cannot he realised till there is more reciprocal, international trading, while internally improvement is impossible till retail prices are co-ordinated more equally with the abnormally cheap, raw materials.”