EFFECTS OF PREFERENCE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9189, 8 September 1908, Page 4

EFFECTS OF PREFERENCE.

Some interesting figures, illustrating the rapid growth of inter-Imperial trade, particularly under the fostering influence of colonial preference, are contained in a memorandum just jissued by the British Tariff Commission. In regard to food supplies within the Empire, it is stated that a comparison of the returns for the years 1892 to 1896 with the period from 1902 to 1906, shows that in a decade the United Kingdom's average annual importation of wheat and flour from British possessions has grown from 14| to 36| million cwt., while importations from foreign countries have declined from 83£ to 77J million cwt., or 7J per cent. In the same period imports of meat from the colonies have increased from an annual average of 3,089,000 cwt. to 5,048,000 cwt. Foreign supplies have at the same time grown by 4,872,000 cwt. Butter shows a still more striking result. In the ten years the colonial importations have swelled from an annual average cf 268,000 cwt. to 850.000 cwt. Similarly, the supplies of colonial cheese sent to England increased from a yearly average of 1,176,000 cwt. to 1,928,000 cwt., or by 64 per cent., while the imports from foreign countries declined by 365.000 cwt. per annum, or 36 per cent. On the subject of the growth of trade with the colonies under preference, it is pointed out that while in the period 1892-6 the exports from the United Kingdom to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand combined averaged £23,750,000, in the period 1902-6, when the preferential duties were in operation, the average rose to £36,000,000, an increase of over 50 per cent., while the figure in 1907 was nearly £50,000,000, or considerably more than duuble the average for 1892-6. This is satisfactory so far as it goes, but it has to be remembered that in recent years the development in the trade between the three colonies and foreign countries has been relatively much greater. "Whereas in the twenty years from !CBj to 1906 the United Kingdom trade with Canada, Australia, and Ni\v Zealand increased by £11,400,000, or 38 per cent., the foreign Irade with them increased by £38,000,000, ur 187 per cent. ,In 1886 (he British share of the colonial import mark't was nearly 50 per cent, larger than the foreign share; in 19(ifi it was 30 per cent, smaller. The first colonial preference was that of Canada in 1897. Up tothattime the amount of British trade with the three colonies was on the decline. The decline has since been stayed, but the rate of increase is less than j the rate of increase of the foreign trade with the same colonies. Rememberirg that the population of these three colonies has increased 50 per cent, in the last twenty year?, it is seen that British trade per head of the colonial population has actually declined, while the foreign trade has increased by more than 90 per cent, per/head."