FARM COSTS INCREASE

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29950, 11 October 1962, Page 10

FARM COSTS INCREASE

“Manufacturers Not To Blame” (N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON. October 10. “I was disappointed to read the remarks reported yesterday as having been made by Mr R. Woolerton, Dominion president of the dairy section of Federated Farmers,” said the retiring president of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation, Mr T- E. Bower, at the annual conference today. “Manufacturing in New Zealand is not. as he suggested. reseponsible for putting up farm costs. Both manufacturers and farmers have to produce within the political and economic conditions that New Zealand as a whole has elected to have. “One of the influences that has pushed up wages and land values has been not our manufacturing growth, but the generally high level of realisations for primary products, starting with the wool boom of 1951. Manufacturers just as much as farmers have incurred increases in costs over which they have no control.

“Currency devaluation, which Mr Woolerton recommends. would, of course, give exporters a subsidy against rising costs, but I doubt if it would be in the national interest. It would certainly raise internal costs immediately. “We manufacturers desire to work with the primary producers and exporters to increase New Zealand's earning of overseas exchange by exports from both farms and factories, and we must tackle the job together if New Zealand is to face successfully the period of economic and maraketing readjustment which seems to be inevitable in the coming decade.”