WIDESPREAD ERROR.

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 175, 17 March 1932, Page 6

WIDESPREAD ERROR.

a. e.

ROBINSON.

To the Editor. Sir, — Please favour me with a few lines to correct a xixost extraordinary and widespread error due to misuse : of certain figures issued by the GoI vernment Statistician. Taking 1928 as a base, farm costs are given as having deereased 9.3 per cent., and export prices 42.5 per cent. Far and wide the idea has caught hold that these two percentages have a relationship. That is not so. There are many sets of costs in the total values of exports, besides farming costs. Many of these costs, freight, killing, freezing, shipping, which have hardly come down, amoxxnted to nearly all the cost of certain farm products in 1928, and it is quite wrong to suppose the x*eduction of farm returns as 42.5 per cent. — that is the reduction over the whole value of exports. In altogether too many cases, and probably over the whole average of farming, the reduction of 42.5 per cent. in exports completely wipes out ' farm profits. There may still be profits in dairying, but the graziers' losses probably xnore than eliminate dairying profits. Another error is to take imports — the real return which New Zealand receives for exports — at New Zealand prices, for these are built up of actual costs, charges and duties, the latter having notoriously increased. New Zealand receives imports much cheaper than the statistical indexes indicate, in comparison with what was paid in earlier years. As statistical tables which convey the above incorrect ideas are quoted in the newspapers almost every day and were used by the Economy Commission, I trust you consider this ixxtrusion on your space justifiable. — I

am, etc.,

Auckland, March 15, 1932.