Growing Market In India For New Zealand Goods

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29153, 14 March 1960, Page 15

Growing Market In India For New Zealand Goods

With India’s standard of living increasing by 2 per cent, every year there would be an additional market of 4,000.000 people each year, said Dr. Lionel Neri, addressing 300 delegates at the South Island Rotary International conference (district 298) on Saturday. Dr. Neri emigrated to New Zealand in 1958, and is now practising medicine at Hawera. He was educated in India and qualified as a doctor at Madras in 1945. He spent nine years in England doing post-graduate studies, and in 1953 became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. Australia and New Zealand were isolated in South-east Asia for they were bound by ties to Europe, which was 13,000 miles away. It had always been thought that these ties were indissoluble, but over the last 15 years there had been great changes in trade, politics, and nationalism in the Southern Hemisphere, said Dr. Neri. The 1100 m people In South-east Asia were no longer tourist excitements. They were becoming nations that would play »a great part in the lives of New Zealanders of tomorrow. Collective security measures such as S.E.A.T.O. had drawn the nations together, but against this trend there was still an instinctive revulsion by Anglo-Saxons to Asiatic races. Language had previously insulated Australia and New Zealand from their neighbours, but now this was being broken down, said Dr. Neri. “Gulf” Between Countries He did not regard the differences between the countries as an impenetrable barrier but rather as a gulf—on the one side

an Asia ,W only recently had been mediaeval and feudal, with an abysmal illiteracy and antiquated production methods; and on the other side Australia and New Zealand with their modem developments.

Understanding and acceptance were needed to bridge this gulf. Asiatics must be helped td emerge into the twentieth century. Dr. Neri cited his own country, India, as an example. India, he said was now moving into the twentieth century, and the India of tomorrow would be a modem and great nation. What would be the impact of this on New Zealand, an agrarian country that depended for its markets on countries 13,000 miles away? As the standard of living increased in India there would be a demand for more and better foods, eggs, butter, milk, cheese, and frozen vegetables. More woollen clothing would also be wanted.

It had always appalled him, said Dr. Neri, to hear people who had travelled through South-east Asia say there were no new markets there. Markets were there, but they had to be sought or even started. New Zealand could even give away goods to acquaint people with what she had to offer.

If New Zealand could create new markets she would no longer be isolated and vulnerable to changes in European production and buying habits, said Dr. Neri. New markets in Asia could also provide New Zealand with goods that she required, such as silks and cottons, which would help to boost New Zealand’s secondary industries. Over the next 20 years India and New Zealand must eventually move into friendship and

partnership. The Indian philosophy might temper the materialism which was becoming part of New Zealand’s way of life, said Dr. Neri.