SHIPPING COMPETITON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 1 May 1913, Page 4

SHIPPING COMPETITON.

A resolution was pa&sed at the last I Imperial Conference pointing out the necessity of taking steps to prevent unfair competition with British ships, of subsidised foreign ships. Mr Bu ■- ton, representing the Board of Trade, stated that British shipping was not subsidised except under unusual circumstances although the Government was naturally anxious to secure for British vessels equal trading. The British India .Steam Navigation) Company, it is understood, lias laid a concrete case before the Government. This company, in keen competition with. ..the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, a subsidised Japanese line which, although it showed a deficit last year of 2,087,299 yen, was s able, by means of a subsidy of about £600,000 from the Japanese Government, to pay a dividend of 10 per cent., and to add a considerable sum to their reserve fund. Then, again, not only are the vessels of this line permitted to engage in the coastal trade of India and Ceylon, and to use the subsidy to undercut all British, rates, but British ships are denied the opportunity of competing with them in the coastal trade of Japan, In spite of this method of subsidising, the company are prepaid ed to hold their own in competition with the Japanese firm, providing the Japanese Government either admit British ships into their coastal trade of place restrictions on those of their subsidised ships at present engaged in the India and Ceylon coastal trade.