MR WATTS’S TOUR

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26672, 5 March 1952, Page 8

MR WATTS’S TOUR

TRADE TALKS IN EAST AND AUSTRALIA DEPARTURE ON FRIDAY FROM HAREWOOD (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 4. Trade talks in Australia and Eastern countries will occupy a good deal of the time of the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr J. T. Watts) on his visit to Karachi to attend a conference on the Colombo Plan. The Minister expects to be absent from New Zealand for between five and six weeks. Mr Watts will leave Harewood airport next Friday, and on his way through Australia will mept the chairman of the Australian Wheat Board, (Sir John Teasdale) in Melbourne for talks on arrangements for the supply of Australian wheat to New Zealand during the coming year. It is likely that supplies for future years will also be discussed at these talks. Arrangements have also been made for Mr Watts to have discussions with banking and industrial interests in Australia.

“I shall take the opportunity to make all possible trade contacts in Australia and the East,” Mr Watts said today. He expected to meet several Federal Government Ministers in Canberra for talks on supply problems, and said he would be particularly interested in a study of the workings of the Australian Tariff Board. When the New Zealand Trade Representative in Japan ( Mr R. L. Challis) returned to the Dominion recently, he travelled through several countries and reported on trade prospects. Mr Watts said that those reports were of value to tt)e Government and to the trading interests in the Dominion, and where possible he would follow up the leads. In Singapore Mr Watts hopes to meet the Commissioner-General for Southeast Asia (Mr Malcolm MacDonald) and other Government representatives, and through such meetings to form a background to help him to survey the general interests of New Zealand in that area. While he is in Karachi, Mr Watts will confer with Pakistani Government representatives on trade extension prospects, and he will also spend four or five days in New Delhi and visit Bombay on a similar mission.