IMPORTS & PRODUCTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 July 1939, Page 3

IMPORTS & PRODUCTION

DEPENDENCE ON EXPORT TRADE.

VIEW OF FARMERS’ UNION

PRESIDENT.

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

WELLINGTON, July 11

‘‘Let us examine the question how we could do without the exporter, and maintain our standard of living.” said the Dominion President of the Farmers’ Union (Mr W. W. Mulholland) in his address at the annual conference today. ”A table in the Statistical Summary of the Reserve Bank shows that out of total imports for 1938 amounting to £55.422,000 only £19.691,000 were for finished consumers’ goods, if we include the whole of the £5,527,000 under unclassified as being finished consumers’ goods, which they were not. The remaining £35,731,000 come under the headings: Producers' materials, fuels, lubricants, producers' equipment, and transport equipment—that is to say for the production of local goods and services. As imports must be reduced by the Government in 1939 to not more than--£35,000,000, possibly to £30,000,000, manufacturers will have difficulty in obtaining materials and equipment to maintain last year’s production, even if no finished consumers’ goods were imported at all. Therefore, any fall in farmers’ production for export must materially reduce the amount of goods and services that local manufacturers, etc., can supply. If we are to continue to enjoy anything like the standard of living which we have been enjoying, it is absolutely necessary that the production of the farmers of New Zealand shall be maintained at least at its present level. It is pure stupidity to suggest that the country can maintain its high standard of living independent of the complete maintenance of its export trade. The primary production on which this is dependent can only be maintained by adjusting internal costs to a satisfactory relationship with internal prices.”