PRICE CONTROL RELAXATION

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25735, 22 February 1949, Page 6

PRICE CONTROL RELAXATION

RETAILERS’ REQUEST TO MINISTER SIX MONTHS’ TRIAL SUGGESTED From Our Own Reporter TIMARU, February 21. A partial relaxation of price control will be asked for by the New Zealand Retailers’ Federation, according to a press statement released at the annual,conference of the federation at Timaru to-day. Moving the remit, Mr J. A. Stenberg (Auckland) said that his association favoured the relaxation of price control on a selected range of commodities for an experimental period of six months. "We feel that # the supply position of many lines will enable competition adequately to control prices,” said Mr Stenberg. "The Government has already admitted that by recently abandoning nrice control on a substantia’ range of fruit and vegetables. "We suggest that each trade group in the federation should nominate a reasonable range of lines from which control could be lifted. At the end of six months the position could ’be reviewed to see whether or not the experiment could be extended io other lines,” he said. An amendment that the removal of price control from a range of lines should be permanent and not experimental was withdrawn after several delegates said that control had been in operation for nearly 10 years, and any relaxation needed to be gradual. It was left to each trade group to select lines which were in adequate supply, the lines to be collated and forwarded to the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr A. H. Nordmeyer) with a request that they be freed from price, control for six months, when the pdsition could be revised by all interested parties.