Hard Businessmen From Turin

Press, Issue 30997, 1 March 1966, Page 24

Hard Businessmen From Turin

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, February 28. Turin is famed for its hard-headed businessmen. The second industrial city of Italy after Milan, is Turin, and its 1.1 million people make motor-cars, heavy machinery consumer goods and textiles that go throughout the world.

In search of new markets, a team of 16 leaders of Turin business and industry arrived in Auckland during the weekend on a preliminary reconnaissance.

If the business climate was favourable, they promised that their organisations would soon organise follow-up trade missions by individual businesses. The mission realised that New Zealand’s system of import licensing made it very difficult to develop new business, said Dr. Pietro Viazzi, secretary to the mission and manager of the foreign trade section of the Turin Chamber of Commerce. ‘We hope that New Zealand will enter the Common Market,” he said. "If that is ‘the

case, then our business relations will surely grow.” Turin, said Dr. Viazzi, had doubled its business since the Common Market came into being. Any country that entered the Common Market had to become efficient to face the competition. “The economic situation of any country improves with liberalisation of trade. Protection is not good for anyone."

How could New Zealand increase its trade with Italy?— Dr. Viazzi thought the main hope was through beef exports rather than wool or mutton.

“It may be a long-term view, but we are here to make direct contacts and exchange ideas,” he said.