BRITISH FOOD CONTRACTS

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25444, 16 March 1948, Page 5

BRITISH FOOD CONTRACTS

HOPE SEEN OF EASIER PRICE TREND MINISTER NOTES FALL IN U.S. MARKETS (Special Correspondent N.Z.PA.) (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONtJON, March 14. The Minister of Food (Mr John Strachey) hopes that the prices Britain has to pay for food are at their highest. “There has been.” he told the House of Commons; “a significant fallen recent weeks in certain of the basic foodstuff prices in the United States which govern world prices. We hope and believe that the terms of trade have ceased moving in the wrong direction.” %

Mr Strachey was replying to complaints about Britain’s agreement with Argentina. Dealing with a demand for the disclosure- of the contract prices, he said that private firms who were buying in world markets before the toar did not rush into print with the. prices at which they had bought commodities. Because those buyers were not accustomed to disclosing the prices paid on their own account, they insisted on not being handicapped when buying on the Government’s account. Mr Strachey said he thought Britain had paid fair prices. Criticisms are heard from time to time in Britain about the British Government’s refusal to state the prices being paid under bulk purchase agreements. Mr Strachey refused at a press conference to give the prices under the recent contract with New Zealand. They were not known in London until they were cabled from Wellington. These criticisms are supported by the "Economist,” which objects to the secrecy about .the prices recently

agreed on with the Argentine and Russia. It also notes that while the terms of the food contract signed last December with Canada were made known in Ottawa, the British Ministry of Food gave only the barest outline of the agreement in London. Yet recent contract with the Danes was published in full by the British Treasury, and Denmark is a dearer supplier than Canada. “Is it fair to the Dominions,” asks the "Economist,” “to refuse to make known officially to the British public what they are giving in supplying Britain with increasing quantities or food at prices lower than those being paid for foreign supplies?” The “Economist” also asks whether anyone is so naive as to believe that when British negotiators are dealing with, say, New Zealand, the prices paid to Denmark for dairy produce are not known in detail on the New Zealand side. “Do the British teams whisper behind their hand to the Danes, ‘don’t tell the N£w Zealanders about this deal?’ ”

Information about prices for bulk food contracts is freely available in the Dominions, adds the “Economist” “Concealment breeds the suspicion that there is something to hide and that those responsible for bulk purchases are cultivating a vested interest in concealment,” it says. ‘‘That may be an extreme and unfair inference, but it will be drawn until fuller and franker\information about the prices paid for Britain’s food and primary raw materials is regularly provided.”