£350m WOOL CHEQUE

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28233, 22 March 1957, Page 15

£350m WOOL CHEQUE

Australian Clip 4.5 m Bales

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 21. Australia’s wool cheque for this season may be the second highest on record. This season’s sales have returned already about £56.8 million more than at January 31, 1956, reports the New Zealand Wool Board’s correspondent from Melbourne.

If present values are maintained for the rest of the selling period, the season’s clip may realise about £350 million or more, compared with £267.12 million last season. This would still be well below the record figure of £508.88 million for 1950-51.

The current wool clip will be about one million bales larger than the 1950-51 clip and is selling currently in Australia at an average price of 62.86 d per lb, compared with 49.38 d in 1955-56 and 115.97 d in 1950-51.

By January 31 this year, about 2.5 mjllion bales had been cleared, leaving about two million bales to be sold, of which 1.4 million bales were already in store.

LONDON WOOL SALE NEXT WEEK

New Zealand crossbreds will again predominate at the London wool sales when the new series begin on March 25. A total of 52,700 bales is expected to be available, according ‘to the Committee of London Wool Brokers, and the series will last a fortnight. The New Zealand offering will consist of 34,700 bales, including 3000 bales which are not due to arrive until about the beginning of the sales. Most of these bales are of North Island crossbreds of good to average style, but there will also be about’ 1000 bales or possibly 1700 bales of good style Invercargill crossbreds. A considerable weight of halfbred and three-quarterbred January lambs will be included in the 10,000 bales of slipes catalogued. Among the New Zealand wools will be some 3575 bales from the United Kingdom stockpile. Crossbred and halfbred fleeces from Dunedin and Timaru form the major part of these.

Need For “Thrift, Lower Taxation”

"Unless thrift was promoted more effectively than ever before, all the country’s savings devices together would fall short of producing enough* money to keep up with investment requirements," said the chairman of the Wellington Trust, Loan and Investment Company, Ltd., Mr E. T. Porter, at the annual meeting in Wellington.

"The availability of savings for capital expansion depends also on lower Government expenditure and lower taxes,” said Mr Porter. "Today’s high taxation is draining off funds needed for investment purposes. If, as a country, we are to meet our investment needs and thus avoid resorting to the undue creation of new money, then a reduction in taxes becomes vitally important.’’

Funds available to the company for investment were nowhere near adequate to meet the many applications received for loans. Primarily this was due to the credit squeeze and to the unreasonable conditions under which the company was compelled by legislation to conduct its business, he said.

The company commenced business in 1872 by accepting money from small depositors and lending to borrowers to build or buy a home. Legislative restrictions, however, debarred the company from certain classes of deposits. Further restrictions imposed during and since the Second World War have limited activities still further, to the undoubted harm of those seeking to secure homes.

“With companies like ours,” said Mr Porter, "investment money is created out of the savings of the community, so that it may be said we provide legitimate funds for mortgage investments.”