Board of Trade

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26319, 13 January 1951, Page 6

Board of Trade

Mr J, T. Watts, visiting his home town for the first time as Minuter of Industries and Commerce and Minister in charge of Import Licensing, briefly discussed some aspects of the work of the Board of Trade when he spoke to a meeting of importers convened on Thursday by the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce. The Minister declared himself “very impressed” with the work of the board, which he felt would be of great advantage to the country. He could not have said lew without questioning this central feature of his Government’s trade policy. Nevertheless, other remarks by Mr Watts suggest very strongly that the policy is not working out as well as the Government hoped. Three departments [said Mr Watts] were involved in import licensing. The Customs Department received applications and issued licences, the Department of Industries and Commerce. as interested in local industry and trade in New Zealand, advised the Minister and the Customs Department, and the Board of Trade acted partly in an executive capacity and partly in an advisory capacity to the Minister. Some material was going directly to the Customs Department tome to the Department of Industries and Commerce, and some to the Board of Trade.

These reasons put forward by-Mr Watts in explanation of the slow working of the present import control machinery can be summarised in a sentence. Too many Government departments and agencies have a finger in the one pie. Before the appointment of the Import Advisory Committee (the predecessor of the Board of Tradd) “The Press" pointed out that the essence of the problem was to simplify procedures; and we doubted the wisdom of adding another to the list of departments and agencies which have something to do with import control (they include the Reserve Bank and the Treasury as well as the departments named by Mr Watts). “ The Press ” believed, and still believes, that all the necessary reforms in the import control and licensing procedures fcould have been carried out more economically and perhaps no less expeditiously by vigorous action within the departments concerned. The overhaul of the administration of the import licensing system was one of the first tasks assigned to the Import Advisory Committee in May; and in making public the first fruits of its work in August, the then Minister (Mr C. M. Bowden) attached some importance to the more precise definition which he said the committee had given to the administrative functions of the Departments of Industries and Commerce and of Customs. Now, it would appear from Mr Watts’s reported remarks, some new authority is needed to redefine the separate

functions of the departments and of the Board of Trade; and Mr Watts is willing to look for this “ clari- “ fication ” beyond the boundaries of the departments and the board. All this is not to suggest that the Board of Trade is doing no good work. It may even be doing work that could not have been done by any Government agency existing before its appointment, although there is little evidence to support this assumption. Perhaps the Minister is attaching too much importance to the signs of dissatisfaction with the work of the Board of Trade. It was bound to displease almost as many as it satisfied, because some importers had pictured it as a grand “ fixing.” agency which would grant them, promptly, all the licences they wanted; and some manufacturers apparently had cast it in the role of an additional and stronger bulwark of protection. It cannot, of course, be either. But its' f resent (early) status, as Mr Watts’s remarks reveal it, points to dangers against, which both the Government and the public must be on guard as this new department settles down as part of the governmental machinery of the country. For both the Government and the public have yet to learn the truth of the dictum that you cannot reduce the evils (or the cost) of bureaucracy by increasing the number of bureaux.