EFFICIENCY IN INDUSTRY

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28179, 18 January 1957, Page 8

EFFICIENCY IN INDUSTRY

Economist Critical Of N.Z. Standards

(New Zealand Pres Association) DUNEDIN, January 17.

Unless New Zealand’s industrial productivity increased at a considerably faster rate in the future, full employment would mean at least a slackening rate of improvement in living standards, said Mr J. W. Rowe, of Victoria University College, in a paper presented today to the economics, statistics and social science section of the Science Congress. “That is,” he said, “if it is really true that the maintenance of full employment demands that manufacturing occupies a steadily increasing proportion of the labour force.” Mr Rowe said that industrial productivity had risen slowly during the last 35 years, when compared with manufacturing in other countries and with the other parts of the New Zealand economy. “Resources Wasted” Unless production was efficient, resources were wasted jus.t as truly as they would be if there was substantial unemployment. The desirability of economic development should not lead New Zealand to overlook the equally desirable goal of efficiency. It was fairly clear, said Mr Rowe, that many New Zealand industries were too small to attain the maximum economy in the use of labour. Knowledge of the factors favourable to efficient production was needed, as there was wide agreement that manufacturing must develop even more rapidly in the next few decades if full employment was to be maintained.