SUPPLIES & MARKETS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 November 1939, Page 6

SUPPLIES & MARKETS

QUEST IN SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE PROSPECTS FOR GERMANY NOT VERY HOPEFUL. PRICE AND OTHER PROBLEMS. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day. 11.35 a.m.) NEW YORK. November 27. “With the proclamation of Britain's export blockade of Germany. SouthEastern Europe's potentialities, both as a source of food and materials and a market for German exports, is undergoing a new analysis,” says Mr Waldemar Hoeffding. the Berlin correspondent of the "New York Times. The following important obstacles must be removed to enable the Reich to substitute land areas adjacent for what originally was transported over the western seas:— (1) Transportation difficulties. (2) Germany's limited ability to export in war time. (3) Rising prices of South-Eastern products. (4) Promotion of their own industries by Balkan countries, tending to absorb their own raw materials. 5) Italian competition for food and industrial materials. (6) The Allies’ counter-moves. The stoppage of sea routes doubles the burdens on other means of transport. Rumania’s demand that German tankers should come to the border to carry petroleum emphasises German transport difficulties. The present lull on the Western Front facilitates German efforts to maintain exports, but how long it will continue no one knows. A thirty per cent increase in petrol prices in Rumania and Yugo- < slavia and similar increases in minerals indicate price increase difficulties. Minerals, wool, flax, hides, oil and seeds are expected in the long run to become increasingly absorbed in the inevitable South-Eastern industrial expansion, with a diminution of availability to Germany. Italy’s “sacred egotism,” with a consequent export offensive in the Balkans, is being increasingly headlined even in the German Press. Only the sixth category, whether the Allies are able to outbid Germany for South-Eastern materials in the same way as in 1914, remains to be seen.