SELLING TO JAPAN

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30093, 29 March 1963, Page 12

SELLING TO JAPAN

Freer Trading Urged (NZ. Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 28.

If every Japanese drank half a pint of milk a day. New Zealand would need twice as many dairy cows'to satisfy the market, the director of the Grasslands Division of the DS.I.R. (Dr. D. P. Sears) told the Wellington branch of the Australian and New Zealand Economic Society tonight Similarly, if they ate as much mutton as New Zealanders, they would eat up this country’s sheep population in six months.

To take advantage of such potential, said Dr. Sears, New Zealand must look at freer two-way trade. Within 20 years, he said, Japan’s population would increase by 20,000,000, and there was a strong possibility the Japanese would achieve their aim of doubling their living standards in that time.

That would also mean a doubling of their milk, meat, cheese, wool and butter consumption. Dr. Sears said it was hard teo sell on markets which were also short of exchange and irritated by New Zealand’s restrictions on their exports, therefore a concept of free trade was well worth pursuing.

“We are certainly making ourselves heard about free trade in milk and meat products. but are we taking enough notice of those who wish to sell to us from Europe, Japan and the United States?”