WOOL MARKETING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 March 1943, Page 4

WOOL MARKETING

THE PURCHASING AGREEMENT WITH BRITAIN EXTENSION OF TERM DESIRED. COMMENT ON AUSTRALIAN REQUEST. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “I have always regarded such a step as inevitable,” declared Mr H. M. Christie, chairman of the New Zealand Wool Council, when asked to comment on a reported request by Australia to Great Britain for an extension of the wool purchasing agreement for a period of up to seven years after the war. Under the present agreement, New Zealand, after providing for its own requirements, sells its surplus wool production to Britain, and that procedure holds good only as far as the end of the war and the next clip thereafter. Mr Christie said New Zealand had made no similar request for any extension, but it was generally considered that some extension would be necessary. Touching on the effect on producers of an extension of the selling agreement, Mr Christie said such a long term purchase plan would result in stabilisation during the very difficult period of post-war reconstruction. There would, of course, have to be safeguards to ensure that New Zealand, for instance, was in a fair position, compared with other producing countries, if and when such a method of bulk purchasing was terminated.