OUR TRADE BALANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 November 1938, Page 5

OUR TRADE BALANCE

f IMPORTS AND LONDON FUNDS. MANUFACTURERS’ VIEW. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) DUNEDIN. November 22. A reply to a statement by the New Zealand Importers’ Federation that imports had been wrongly blamed for the reduction of London funds was made by Mr Rocke O’Shea, secretary of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation, during an address at the annual meeting of the Dunedin Manufacturers’ Association tonight. “Every reasonable person will admit,” Mr O’Shea said, “that our net overseas annual balance, after making London payments, must come back to us in imports. Then there rises the highly important question of the necessity for importing those goods which will most greatly benefit New Zealand. “It is our contention that it is in legislating so as to create conditions that will lead to most satisfactory imports that a Government demonstrates its ability to govern a country. A Government cannot create prosperity but it can and should provide the conditions most suitable to achieve it.

“Accordingly, there is little wonder that the importer is alarmed now that there is reasonable ground for feeling that the period of generalities is over and that the Government is at last actually getting down to the task of restoring confidence in the community by definite measures for the safeguarding of manufacturing industries. What we expect the Government to do is to adjust the position so that the Dominion’s surplus of London funds will come back to us in the form of goods of such type or kind t s are best in the interests of the Dominion as a whole.”