IMPORTANT TRADE PACT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 74, 7 January 1949, Page 3

IMPORTANT TRADE PACT

BRITAIN AND POLAND MAY SIGN SOON LONDON, January 6. The signature of an important trade pact by Poland and Britain, providing for the exchange of goods valued at £150,000,000 over five years, is expected soon in Warsaw, where a delegation from the British Board of Trade has been negotiating for some time.

It is understood that the pact will include compensation for British investors whose properties were taken over by the Polish Government after the war. The actual details of the pact will not lie published until it is signed, hut it is reported that the major British purchases from Poland under the agreement will be food, chiefly bacon and eggs. The quantity of additional bacon which Britain hopes to obtain is 10 per cent, of the present total of British supplies. This will not replace* all the Canadian bacon orders cancelled because of the dollar shortage, but will go some way towards filling the gap. The chief British exports to Poland, will be machinery, wool and rubber. The agreement is expected to be the biggest East-West trade pact since the end of the war. Its value exceeds that of the recent pact between Russia and Poland by £35,000,000.