Payments Balance Concerns Chamber

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31195, 20 October 1966, Page 18

Payments Balance Concerns Chamber

Devaluation of the currency would be discussed at the November meeting of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce; this was symptomatic of the concern of members about New Zealand’s balance of payments position, said the retiring president (Mr B. J. Drake) in his presidential address yesterday.

“It might quite well be that the problem is not to be met by devaluation,” he told the annual meeting. “There are other ways wellknown to the economists, of meeting our balance of payments problem, without resorting to devaluation.” It might be said, without being critical of the Government, that the situation existing today was caused by overspending internationally over a long period.

Mr Drake said that he thought it was reflected to some extent in the large amount of capital assets not being fully used in New Zealand. Much expensive capital equipment was used only eight hours a day, five days a week, without shift work. To use capital assets to the full would require a change in the attitude of the Federation of Labour and of the unions associated with it, to such matters as shift work in a large number of industries and of award wages and the payment of overtime. A meeting should be held soon among chambers of commerce concerned with obtaining South Island calls for the trans-Tasman roll-on, roll-off shipping service, he said.

He said that South Island local bodies met together in annual conference. “Why should not South Island chambers of commerce do the same?”