Planning Industry For Export Market

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29791, 6 April 1962, Page 12

Planning Industry For Export Market

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, April 5.

It was a fallacy to justify industrial development by asserting that £1 million or £2 million would be saved, the executive officer of the Meat and Wool Boards’ Economic Service (Mr R. H. Bevin) said today. Addressing the electoral committees of the boards, Mr Bevin said it was also a fallacy to justify it by suggesting that such development would be necessary to provide employment for New Zealand’s rapidly increasing labour force. It was obvious that the substitution of local production for imported items did not provide the whole answer, said Mr Bevin. Undoubtedly New Zealand would increase manufacturing, and she should. But what New Zealand needed was to look at those types of manufacturing which would give her an export market by making full use of her local raw materials or those imported raw materials which could be processed and re-exported at a satisfactory margin.

“We should continue to resist excessive diversion of resources from our efficient

export industries to those which provide for the local market only,” said Mr Bevin. "Some projects seem to fit in with the criteria—the aluminium project in Southland, the growing forestry industries, and, possibly, the oil refinery.” “Industrial expansion if planned to meet the conditions of best use of resources we can well support. Beyond that, planning can so easily lead to economic inbalance not the least of which is the disposition of the labour force.” It was clear that the great expansion in New Zealand’s labour force would be in the service industries where it had been in the last 10 years. This was the normal pattern for advanced economies and. in fact, employment in manufacturing was already at about the level of other advanced countries.

Referring to the saving of foreign exchange by industrialisation, Mr Bevin said New Zealand must consider what industries could be developed to “save” foreign exchange. Only about oneseventh of New Zealand imports were of consumer goods. The market was supplied mainly by locally-produced consumer goods.