Warning Against Tariff Walls

Press, Volume C, Issue 29624, 21 September 1961, Page 6

Warning Against Tariff Walls

(N Z.P.A.-Keuter—Copyright) VIENNA, September 20. The Australian Federal Treasurer (Mr Harold Holt) said yesterday that primaryproducing countries could not tolerate indefinitely a situation in which liberal trade practices were urged upon them while the highly industrialised countries maintained persistently high levels of protection t>f their agricultural products.

Addressing the annual meeting of the boards of governments of the World Bank. Mr Holt said: told that it is not politically practicable to depart significantly from this policy. "It has not been politically easy or comfortable for some of us in the primary-produc-ing countries to persuade our own manufacturers that restraints imposed upon imports should be removed in the interests of broader world tfade."

“But we have faced up to that issue and we have a right to expect that countries much stronger and more highly-developed than ourselves will at least show the same resolution. "There can be no solution to the problem of imbalance between the industrialised and primary-producing countries until these matters are faced squarely and answers found. “However valuable the operations of the International Bank and the Monetary Fund may be, they can serve as little more than patchwork when what is really needed la fundamental readjustment,” Mr Holt said. Mr Holt said he believed that the International Development Association was a well conceived institution. “But the danger I see is that attention may be concentrated on the question of institutions and the operations of institutions.

“It should really be concentrated on the basic considerations causing the gap between the needs of the developing countries and the capital available to them. “In any event, the amount of aid which can be mode available is unlikely to meet more than a fraction of the needs of most. “These primary-producing countries need profitable trade much more than they need aid. "I am advised that a 1 per cent, increase in their export proceeds would add as much to the income of’ primaryproducing countries as the International Bank disbursed in 1960-61. "Surely it would be much more satisfactory from all pointe ot view if the developing countries were enabled to finance the greeter part of their own development through an increase in the value of their own exports," Mr Hok said. Credit Proposal Addressing yesterday's meeting, the World Bank president (Mr Eugene Black) called on the industrial nations to give easier credit terms to the underdeveloped countries. He promptly won wide support, the Associated Press reported.

Mr Black called for more outright grants and easy loans such as 50-year, interest free loans made by the International Development Association, which is an affiliate of the World Bank, In the debate that followed, speakers tended to agree with Mr Black. He and many others—including the Briitsh Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Selwyn Lloyd), and the United States Under-Secre-tary of State for Economic Affairs (Mr George Balli said the I.D.A. funds might have to be augmented in the future.