Threat To Australian Wheat Trade Seen

Press, Volume C, Issue 29695, 13 December 1961, Page 21

Threat To Australian Wheat Trade Seen

(N .-Reuter—Copyright)

CANBERRA, December 12. The Common Market Countries had the capacity to produce enough wheat to drive Australia out of the United Kingdom market if Britain was unable to gain preferences for Commonwealth countries, tile Minister of Trade (Mr J. McEwen) said yesterday. In a statement on the possible entry of Britain's proposed entry into the Common Market, published in the Department of Trade journal, “Overseas Trading," Mr McEwen said that similarly serious results could befall a whole range of Australia’s food exports.

At present Australia supplied the United Kingdom with about 28 million bushels at wheat a year. The United Kingdom was Australia’s greatest market and many Australian industries had been deliberately geared to supply its requirements. In many cases whole communities had been built around industries heavily dependent on the United Kingdom market. It would be a tragedy of tlie first magnitude if the free world were to lose sight of the grave weaknesses indeed cracks, in its trade foundations which had become more and more apparent in the last few years, Mr McEwen warned. Remodelling If these structural weaknesses were ignored it would seem certain that the remodelling at present being undertaken in Europe could all be for nothing. It could even hasten the deterioration of the total structure of trade and economic relations in the free world erected with such difficulty in the post-war years, he said. The solution lay in the willingness of the industrialised countries to pay more for imports of primary products than the present system of trading enabled them to pay. They would have to produce less of these products themselves than their systems of restrictions and subsidies were aimed at achieving. Steep Drop In Overdrafts Bank overdrafts fell sharply by £lO million to £208.2 million in the week to November 22, the Reserve Bank reports. At this level overdrafts are £25.7 million above the corresponding period of 1960. Trading bank borrowing from the Reserve Bank a. November 29 stood at £22.9 million, an increase of £1.6 million on the previous week.