ECONOMIC AID TO ASIA

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25812, 25 May 1949, Page 5

ECONOMIC AID TO ASIA

U.S. URGED TO EXPAND POLICY INDIAN DELEGATE SPEAKS IN U.N. COMMISSION (Rec. 11 p.m.) NEW YORK, May 23. India called on the United States to-day to aid in developing “the enormous potential demand for consumer goods among millions of Asiatics as an effective answer th the threat of overproduction and depression in Europe and North America.” With Europe reg-ining pre-war levels of output, the United States must turn its attention to ensuring higher standards of living throughout Asia if American full employment was to be maintained, said tne Indian delegate (Mr R. R. Saskena) in the United Nations Economic and Employment Commission. He said that the foreign economic assistance furnished by the United States since the end of the war had gone mainly to revive and expand the economy of Western Europe, which was directly competitive with many sectors of American industry and agriculture. Marshall Plan grants and loans by the American Export-Import Bank had practically all gone either to Europe or Latin America. “The present policy loses sight of the fact that the economy of Asia is complementary to and not competitive with that of the. United States, and its development would lead to such an increase in activity as to overshadow any current tendency towards a recession in the West,” said Mr Saskena. If purchasing power among more than 350,000,000 inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent were not expanded. the United States might be compelled to curtail its industrial output in face of widening deflation at home and in Europe. “If the United States does not reduce its output, the combined production of Europe and North America will farexceed the effective demand,’’ he adder!. “European recovery is now nearly completed, and the United States should henceforth view the problem of maintaining domestic stability as primarily one of developing backward areas under the programme enunciated by President TYuman.”