“Clever Exports” Seen As Answer To U.K. Needs

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30233, 11 September 1963, Page 17

“Clever Exports” Seen As Answer To U.K. Needs

Britain would have to try to concentrate more on "clever exports”—first-rate inventions, electronics and sophisticated products, said Britain's Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr J. D. R. T. Tilney) yesterday. He was guest speaker at a Christchurch Rotary Club luncheon attended by 138 members and guests. Britain had not got much else besides coal and knowhow, he said. The problem of the country in the future was, there-' fore, to try to make the exports bring in as much money—more than has been done in the past—with possibly less 'lnaterials being used.

Mr Tilney said that unemployment was still a worry in Britain. While it had dropped to 2J per cent of the worker force, this represented 500.000 people. Unemployment tended to be concentrated in certain parts of the country where fortunes were linked with heavy industries which were no longer so importar-t on the British industrial scene. Britain had to increase her exports in the years ahead enormously to balance the growing needs for imparts as its economy expanded, he said. He said that Britain was now prepared to limit its subsidies to home meat producers. But overseas suppliers must be prepared to counter-balance this by regulating the flow of their shipments. "Currently we are taking very little (less than onetenth) of New Zealand’s beef; about one-third of her wool; nearly half of her mutton, and nearly all of her butter, cheese and lamb,” said Mr Tilney. ■'This trade follows the pull of tradition; but it also follows the strong pull of the best price.”

Mr Tilney said it was a fact that the quota scheme had raised New Zealand’s export earnings from buitter substantially above the level of recent years. Proper Butter Price

“Is the proper price (of butter) 2s a lb, as in New Zealand?” asked Mr Tilney. “Or is it 3s 6d a lb as in the United Kingdom?” Mr Tilney said that Britain wanted “improve the tone” and stability of the meat market, so that it could limit its expenditure on farm subsidies. “We have suggested that this can be done, without reducing the level of New Zealand supplies and while providing scope for sharing the growth of the market by the agreed phasing of arrivals of supplies from all sources to keep an even flow at the optimum rate the market can absorb,” Mr Tilney said. “We believe that a mutu-ally-acceptable scheme can be worked out in constructive negotiations which in the tong run will benefit New Zealand.”

Mr Tilney said that Britain had been perturbed, particularly since 1961, at the high cost of its farm' subsidies. The British Government had been glad that there were signs that the decline in Britain’s share of New Zealand's import trade had been arrested.