PRICE CONTROL RELAXED

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26058, 10 March 1950, Page 8

PRICE CONTROL RELAXED

Many Lines Of Goods CHARGES FOR SERVICES From Our Own Reporter . WELLINGTON, March 9. Price controls over a big number oi items are revoked by Order-in-Council to-night and will come into effect immediately. The schedule of items attached to the order lists the following goods as being freed from control:— Brushware of all kinds (including cotton and yarn mops, steel brushes, and feather dusters). Culinary goods, baking cups and cake papers, colourings, jam and preserving jar covers, other than metal or glass covers. . . Haberdashery.—The following items of haberdashery are affected: arm bands, belt buckles, art needlework frames, belts and braces, bindings, codkins, braids, buttons, button fasteners and button moulds, cottons, crochet hooks, dome fasteners, dress cords, shields and weights, edgings, elastics, embroidery cottons and silks, finger shields, garters (women’s), garters- and suspenders (men’s), hair wavers, nets, slides, curlers and ornaments, hooks and eyes, insertions, laces, linen thread, mending Cottons, silks and wools. , - Millinery lines. —Needles, petersham, pins, safety pins, bobby pins, hair pins, hat pins and knitting pins, pyjama girdles, spool silks, stilettoes, tapes, tape measures (other than metal), tatting shuttles, vest buckles, webbing, whalebone, woven labels, zipp fasteners. Industrial goods.—Abrasives (including metal burnishing compounds), asbestos clothing, bearing metals, buffs, polishing and burnishing, case hardening compounds, chemical fireextinguishers and parts, grinding wheels (including cut-off wheels, mounted points, abrasives sticks and bricks, dressers and cutters).

Hoists (including spares and chain blocks, but not pulleys), machinery processing used in the manufacture and including spare parts. Office safes (including strong room doors).

Scrap metals (ferrous and non-fer-rous).

Valves, air, steam and water, and spare parts, but excluding taps or cocks,- water meters* and parts, wirewoven gauze and wire-woven cloth (including brattice cloth), zinc boiler blocks.

Stationery.—Knitting books, paper Eatterns and paper shopping bags, regions tracts, sheet music, miscellaneous art figures, ash trays. . Bird cages and accessories, bon-bon crackers, bottle tops, corks, crown tops, other than metal or glass; tops for jam or preserving jars, bunting and made-up flags, calcium chloride. Candlesticks, cardboard boxes and cartons, caravans, clay bird traps, duck calls and decoys. Collar studs and cuff links. Dyes: commercial and household. Fireworks, garden ornaments, gramophones and accessories, including records; ice jars, wickered key rings, mine props, musical boxes, and similar novelties, mutton birds, nursery plants, trees and shrubs, pearl essence, pentachloro-jjhenol. Shaving requisites, but not including shaving soap, creams and lotions; shaving' mirrors and cabinets, sheep raddle. Smokers’ requisites, but not including tobacco, cigarettes, cigarette papers, matches, or lighter fluid. Spraying flock, walking sticks and umbrellas, whistles, wrist straps.

SERVICES

(a) Rates or fees charged for the performance of any service rendered in any of the following professions or callings:—(l) accountancy, (2) architectural, (3) civil engineering, (4) legal, (5) medical, dental and related professions or callings with the exception of hospital charges, (6) real estate agency, (7) sharebroking, (8) surveying, (9) typing (public), (10) valuation, (11) veterinary.

(b) The rates or fees charged for commercial printing, (c) The rates or fees charged for newspaper advertising. The effect of these is to make goods and. services no longer subject to price control during such time as no price order or approval is in force in respect of those goods or services. f

The prices of many of the goods specified in the notice were previously controlled by price orders and approvals relating to those goods and other goods not mentioned ifi the notice. Those price orders and approvals remain in force in respect of goods not specified in the notice. Commenting on the revocation order, the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr C. M. Bowden) said: “This step is in accordance with the policy of removing price control in Cases where altered circumstances no longer justify it.” Factors remained. Mr Bow&en continued. which made it both impossible and unwise to press towards the complete lifting of controls at the present time. They included a tendency towards inflation, the available labour force and the supply position. Goods which entered into the cost of living called for especially careful consideration.

The Price Tribunal, the Minister said, was watching industry with a view to progressive removal of control and was considering the interests of both the business community and the public.

Where control still existed, the cooperation of traders with the tribunal was essential. If the obligations were disregarded the ultimate removal of controls might be delayed. Similarly any untoward price movements on decontrolled lines could raise the question of whether control should be reintroduced.