INDIA’S TRADE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 January 1939, Page 8

INDIA’S TRADE

PREDICTION OF ECONOMIC COLLAPSE . BRITISH COMMISSIONER’S REPORT. EXTENSION OF DOMESTIC PRODUCTION. By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. (Received This Day, 11.35 a.m.) LONDON, January 11. Sir Thomas Ainscough, Senior Trade Commissioner in India and Ceylon, in his annual report predicts India’s financial and economic collapse if the policy of increasing domestic production is extended. If the system of maximum industrialisation is pushed to the lengths contemplated by the National Congress and provincial governments, he says, it would result in, firstly, a serious clash of interest with the agricultural. element, constituting seventy per cent of the population: secondly, in a financial crisis, because Customs receipts represent sixty per cent of the Government’s revenue; thirdly, in inability to meet financial commitments in London and inability to maintain the exchange. The report pointed out that an enormous drop in imports of cotton goods and manufactures had alreadyresulted from high tariffs and that the output of Indian factories was soaring correspondingly.