FUTURE OF N.A.C.

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27151, 22 September 1953, Page 8

FUTURE OF N.A.C.

Government Still Ready To Sell MR HOLLAND INVITES OFFERS (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, September 21. The Government would still consider any reasonable offer for the National Airways Corporation, said the Prime Minister (Mr Holland), addressing a lunch meeting of the Wellington Junior Chamber of Commerce today. He said the Government would also consider any reasonable proposition for the purchase of its interest in Tasman Empire Airways and in British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines. The purchaser’s credit would have to be good. “When we took office,” he said, “we wanted to sell the N.A.C., but I had not thought it out as well as some of you had. and I did not realise how hard it would be to sell a concern that was losing £320,000 a year. So we took it in hand ourselves, and we have made it pay.” After his address, the Prime Minister said the Government was not making any formal offer to sell the corporation, but if anyone should make a reasonable offer it would receive sympathetic consideration. The Government was also in the petrol business, he told the meeting, referring to the State’s interest in a British oil company. “We have 51 per cent, of the shares, but we don’t have the say,” he said. “If someone would like to get into the petrol business, we could help him.”

Other enterprises in which the Government had an interest were “the iron and steel business, linen flax, and the salt business—we’re in that in a big way.” Both Tasman Empire Airways and British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines are running at a loss. The loss on Tasman Airways for the year ended last March was about £150,000, of which New Zealand had to find half. New Zealand’s contribution to the loss on B.C.P.A. in the last financial year was about £50.000. This year’s Government Estimates, provide for a contribution of £60,000 to meet the expected loss on B.C.P.A. operation in the current financial year.