BRITISH SHIPPING INDUSTRY

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26055, 7 March 1950, Page 5

BRITISH SHIPPING INDUSTRY

GOVERNMENT POLICY CRITICISED BULK PURCHASING AND HIGH TAXATION (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, March 6. The development of British shipping was being-hampered by high taxation, by continued Government bulk purchasing, and by the refusal- of the Government to allow British owners to sell their old ships to foreign countries, said Sir Guy Ropner, president of the United Kingdom Chamber of Shipping, in his presidential address at the annual meeting of the chamber. If British owners, since the Second World War, had been permitted to get rid of their old ships abroad, they would have been able to realise as much as £2,000,000, which could have been used to pay for new tonnage, Sir Guy Ropner continued. Instead of assisting British owners to carrv out these replacements, the Government seemed to fall over itself in its eagerness to allow former enemy countries to reconstruct their merchant fleets and so increase the difficult competition which British shipping was already encountering.

Sir Guy Ropner predicted that, unless there was a fuller realisation of the position, and unless immediate steps were taken to meet it, there would be many empty berths in British shipbuilding yards in future. Another burden imposed upon the shipping industry by the Government was bulk buying, which by eliminating competition encouraged low freight rates. Taxation was now so high that it was almost impossible for • owners to construct new ships from revenue, Sir Guy Ropner concluded. Viscount Runciman’s View Viscount Runciman, speaking to the Chamber of Shipping about foreign competition, said that Panama’s merchant fleet now totalled more than 3,000,000 tons and was the fourth largest in the world. The Brazilian merchant fleet was half as big again as before the Second World War. The Portuguese fleet had been doubled; and the Argentine fleet had been trebled. “It is fair to say that these increases, which roughly balance the reductions in the fleets of former enemy countries, have not been made with much regard to genuine commercial considerations, and that fleets sc created could not be kept in being on a true commercial basis,” said Lord Runciman. ’‘Discrimination in the allocation of cargo, subsidies to build and subsidies to operate, agreements designed to exclude third parties from carrying trade between two contracting countries, the misuse of exchange control to divert cargoes or to make life more difficult for foreigners, the distortion of insurance arrangements—ail these obstacles and others like them are strewn like mines along the seaways of the world.” Other speakers referred to what was termed the “extraordinary spectacle” of valuable refrigerated ships and other tonnage being used as storage space for meat and grain at an excessive cost to the taxpayer.

Stifling of Enterprise Alleged Sir Guy Ropner, winding up the discussion, said that to-day it was no longer possible for young men with £lO,OOO to break away and start new shipping companies. Many of the companies whose names are now household words were started in this W “I am convinced that the material is still there if it is given a chance. How inconsistent it is for Government spokesmen to appeal over and over again for enterprise and adventure m industry, while at the sarrie time the assets and instruments we must have for fresh endeavour are denied to us by high taxation and high costs. “It almost appears that the Government attaches more importance to the high-faluting sounds of their own appeals than to their practicability. A chronic anaemic is not the best man to bring home the bacon. The disadvantages I have mentioned are not shared by some of our foreign competitors, with the result that the balance between us steadily becomes more adverse.” The meeting unanimously decided to call upon the Government to review the present incidence of taxation upon shipping, and to emphasise that the refusal of permission to sell old British •ships abroad was handicapping the sound development of the industry. The resolution also emphasised that the continuation of Government bulk buying had an adverse effect upon the efficient use of British ships.