CRISIS IN FRANCE
Big Dollar Gap Reported
(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) NEW YORK, Nov. 10. France will soon slash imports to mevt her most serious crisis since 1947 when the United states granted emergency aid, reported the Paris correspondent of the “New York limes” today.
France’s dollar reserves are approaching exhaustion, he said. The reductions in imports will be more drastic, proportionately, than those made bj Britain. , Uollar reserves—-normally about 400,000,000 dollars in recent years and 2,500,000,000 dollars before World War ll—had dropped to below 200,000,000 dollars.
When that working capital was gone, nothing would remain but the Bank of France's gold reserve which amounted to 547,000,000 dollars, and which the Finance Minister would not dare to touch.
The Deputy-Prime Minister (Mr Rene Pleven) will make a statement before the National Assembly next week, and it is expected to resemble closely that made to the House of Commons on Wednesday by Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Richard Butler).
France’s tentative dollar import programme for 1952 had been 825,000,000 dollars, but officials said it would be cut below 600,000,000 dollars, which would inevitably curtail defence and other production. France, in October, incurred a deficit of 160,000,000 dollars to the European Payments Union, which was another reason for reducing imports. Officials said that the aggregate of American aid might be sufficient but too much had been earmarked for military use. One expert said: "Europe is not ready for all the military equipment that is provided, but desperately needs dollars to buy raw materials to keep its industries going.” The correspondent said that the French wer-> annoyed by the slow receipt of American aid already appropriated. and the lack of response to their appeal to Washington for about 400,000.000 dollars in aid for the war in Indo-China which was costing France more than 1.000.000,000 dollars a year, thus handicapping her efforts to rearm in Europe.
CRISIS IN FRANCE
Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26576, 12 November 1951, Page 7
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Press. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 New Zealand licence. This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
This newspaper was digitised in partnership with Christchurch City Libraries.
Log in