PROTECTION OF INDUSTRY

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29250, 7 July 1960, Page 5

PROTECTION OF INDUSTRY

Conference Decision

On Import Controls The interpretation of the decisions of the recent industrial development conference by the president of the New Zealand Manufacturers' Federation (Mr W. A. Bascand) was questioned yesterday' by a university delegate to the conference. Professor B. P. Philpott, Professor of Agricultural Economics at Canterbury Agricultural College. Mr Bascand was reported, in a Press Association message from Palmerston North, as saying it was unanimously agreed that protection for industry was an essential principle, but it was also essential that the tariff system be supplemented by a flexible system of import licensing. “What the conference actually decided on this vital question of protection is set out in the report of committee two,” said Professor Philpott He quoted a clause from the report which read as follows: “The feasible means of giving effect to this policy (economic expansion of industry) is by a properly designed and adequate tariff, supplemented in special circumstances by import licensing, but having regard always to the costs involved to the whole New Zealand economy. . . .” Professor Philpott said the critical passage in this paragraph Was the phrase “in special circumstances.” This gave quite a different emphasis from Mr Bascand’s interpretation, he said.