“Key” Role For Exports

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31729, 12 July 1968, Page 20

“Key” Role For Exports

The key to sound economic development and reasonable stability in the external accounts in the future lay in channelling more resources into exports and competitive import saving, the Minister of Finance (Mr Muldoon) said yesterday in an economic review presented to Parliament.

This could not be done overnight and required co-operation by every section of the community, Mr Muldoon said. The National Development Conference convened by the Government had the task of recommending an integrated development programme and targets for the economy for the next 10 years.

New Zealand was emerging from the worst economic crisis since the Second World War, Mr Muldoon said. Firm

economic policies were needed to ensure that internal demand did not cause any undue rise in external expenditure. “The basic objectives of economic policy will continue to be full employment, a steady rate of growth, reasonable stability of costs and prices and a balance of payments in approximate equilibrium,” the Minister said. "It is not possible to achieve all these objectives simultaneously. From time to time, circumstances require that certain of the objectives should take precedence.” Mr Muldoon suggested that policies should be centred on the following basic considerations;—

1. The country’s economic well-being depended fundamentally on the productive capacity of the economy. Great emphasis needed to be placed on the efficient use of resources of labour and capital. 2. In the development of a wider range of export industries, domestic consumption would have to be kept to a level which ensured that sufficient resources were left free to generate increased export production. 3. Rapid expansion on too many fronts at once would again strain the country’s limited resources and priorities would have to be established to avoid balance-of-payments problems.

■ “In promoting steady economic growth and social advancement in a changing economic environment, some change to established attitudes and interests may be unavoidable," the Minister said. “If the present opportunity to reshape the economy is not taken, New Zealand may fall behind other countries in living standards, in social welfare, in education and in the attainment of other important social and economic objectives.”