The Press MONDAY, JUNE 10, 1963. Export Conference

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30153, 10 June 1963, Page 10

The Press MONDAY, JUNE 10, 1963. Export Conference

Some of the recommendations of the export development conference will probably lead to useful results; but it should be realised that those referring to manufacturing can have only a marginal effect on New Zealand’s overseas trade balance. The essential facts are that in the meantime any great increase in export eamiffgs must come from the great primary industries, including processing industries, and that the contribution manufacturing can make must be limited until we learn to concentrate our energies. The overseas business that our best manufacturers do is all the more remarkable and creditable because of the handicap they suffer in having to compete against less useful industries for labour and for money to import raw materials and equipment The really important task in the industrial field is to rationalise our manufacturing industries, a subject that does not seem to have come before the conference. Until this is realised our manufacturers, and our primary industries, too, will be at a disadvantage in world markets.

Among the more tangible results of the conference were recommendations that arrangements should be made for export credits insurance and that the trading banks should be given greater freedom to arrange finance for exports. The conference incidentally also came down on the side of

the banks in their claim for authority to open savings branches. The conference again showed good sense in arguing that non-essential goods should be freed from export restrictions (though the effect of that must depend on the definition of non-essential) and in urging that persons outside the Public Service should be eligible as trade commissioners. The delegates were a good deal less sensible when they advocated the payment of subsidies on inland and coastal freights, a procedure well calculated to discourage the efficiency of freight operators. Apparently the conference considered that the various new organisations it proposed should be independent of the Government after the early stages. We would have more confidence in their independence if it was not for the suspicion that the Department of Industries and Commerce is determined to retain a strong voice in the export business. For instance, one of the proposals is the establishment of a design council; but the New Zealand Design Association, which has done much to advance this work and prepared the way for such a council, was not invited by the department to attend the conference. However, it is satisfactory that the delegates were ready to let export industries stand on their own feet. In retrospect that may have been the biggest achievement of the conference.