LEND-LEASE POLICY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 November 1943, Page 3

LEND-LEASE POLICY

SOME DIFFICULT PROBLEMS FOR NEW ZEALAND QUESTION OF ULTIMATE SETTLEMENT. AND OF STERLING BALANCES. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) DUNEDIN, November 5. “It has never yet been definitely stated whether goods supplied under Lend-Lease are to be paid for eventually, and if so, when and how,” said the president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand, Mr N. B. Spencer, Auckland, in his address at the annual conference today. “Most people have taken it for granted that goods supplied under the LendLease scheme will not be paid for. They are goods supplied for the common cause of winning the war; and if all the Allies'are throwing into the pool all they have for that, purpose there should be no need of an accounting afterward. If there is a final accounting and payment to be made after the war then there are some very difficult problems which will have to be thrashed out first. For example, we are receiving large quantities of LendLease goods at 1943 inflated prices, and supplying in return foodstuffs and other primary produce at prices which have been pegged at little more than pre-war levels. “Another point which will be of vital importance after the war is the fact that a large quantity of primary produce, which would normally be exported to England, resulting in increased sterling balances, is now being supplied to the United States of America as a contra to Lend-Lease. Much of our present sterling balance in England is being used up in war expenses, and consequently when the war is finished we will not have sufficient funds to finance the large imports of consumer goods necessary to make up for wartime shortages.”