JAPANESE SHIPPING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 155, 4 July 1938, Page 6

JAPANESE SHIPPING.

N.Y.K.'S YEAR. DIVIDEND 6 PER CEXT. At the annual meeting of the Japanese shipping company Nippon Yusen Kaisya held at Tokyo on May 27 the president. Mr. Xoboru Ohtani. regret tod a marked decrease in net profits. Freight earnings had conspicuously declined, owing to the general depression of the shipping trade. The X.Y.K. suffered the more because of the continued victual suspension of trade with China, the increased (stringency of the exchange control and other measures seriously discouraging general imports to Japan. In addition to the recurrence of the world's depression, the lowering tendency of prices of commodities in Great Britain and the United States, on the one hand, and tlie higher prices prevailing in Japan, on the other, wore responsible for the stagnancy of exports from Japan, not to speak of the artificial barriers which •were and still are being increasingly erected everywhere, especially against goods from Japan. Passenger earnings were also subjected to a hard check, owing in great measure to the continuation of the China trouble.

The prudence with which the company had been putting aside a considerable portion of its profits as reserve was as

■eitinont and necessary as ever, and he was glad to say that, irrespective of the considerable decrease of profit, the directors were enabled to recommend that 1.500.000 yen out of the said profit be set aside as a speefaj fund for the depredation oft ships' value, besides declaring th.' dividend to the shareholders at 0 per cent per annum.