POST-WAR ECONOMY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1943, Page 4

POST-WAR ECONOMY

BRITISH MINISTER’S SURVEY SOME DIFFICULT PROBLEMS. CONSUMER AND CAPITAL DEMANDS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.35 a.m.) RUGBY, November 30. In concluding the Address-in-Reply Debate in the Hpuse of Commons, the Minister of Production (Mr Oliver Lyttelton) referred to post-war reconstruction. He said that as soon as the war was over we should be faced by three insistent demands —a demand for consumer goods, particularly textiles; a demand for housing, and we must add to these arrears of essential maintenance. We were drawing to some extent on capital and piling up arrears of maintenance which had to be met. National savings, as far as he could calculate them, would not support any substantial programme of capital reconstruction immediately after the war. He added that if there were substantially more spent than national savings, the country would be getting ‘into an inflationary position as disastrous for one side in industry as for the other. It would be necessary to hold back demands for capital reconstruction while we met these insistent demands. There was a great field for capital expenditure in the improvement and reconstruction of national productive equipment in three directions —transport, power and the further utilisation by scientific means of the national raw material, coal. Mr Lyttelton said the Government was doing its best to show new ideas in housing. The Government intended to make more materials available for reconstruction. It also hoped to implement schemes for assisting local authorities to acquire sites for building.

Referring to social security, Mr Lyttelton said the Government had very definite proposals for a large part of the field, but equally it would be candid to say that there were subjects on which they were undecided and would have to take the opinions of members. On the question of a change from war to peace production, he suggested that the probabilities were that the war with Germany would finish before the war with Japan and that therefore we should have a period when war production would still absorb an important part of productive capacity.