Electricity ‘Exportable’

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31760, 17 August 1968, Page 40

Electricity ‘Exportable’

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, August 16.

Water, in the form of cheap electric power, was an exportable commodity, the managing director of Comalco (Mr D. J. Hibberd) said today at a discussion on private overseas investment in New Zealand.

Mr Hibberd said New Zealand should pay more attention to the possibility of offering-. cheap power to overseas concerns to entice them to invest here.

“In the long run, New Zealanders could benefit a great deal from this, even if it meant more expensive thermal power for domestic use,” Mr Hibberd said. “There are industries other than the aluminium industry using electro-metallurgical or electro-chemical processes which can be attracted by assured low-cost power,” he said.

Mr Hibberd said capital Inflow into New Zealand had been running at 2 per cent to 4 per cent of foreign exchange receipts, whereas in Australia the figure had been 20 per cent. Mr Hibberd said that a background favourable to the acceptance of overseas capital had to be created to promote overseas investment. New Zealand would also need to go out and seek capital. “Overseas financiers have not come knocking on our door. We have had to go out,

do a lot of talking to get what we needed.

“One of the most recurring criticisms you hear about reliance on overseas capital is that there eventually comes a day of reckoning,” he said. But overseas capital was invested in enterprises which added significantly to export earnings, helped in the re placement of imports, and improved industrial efficiency. “I personally do not believe, from an economic standpoint, that a day of reckoning ever arrives,” he said. “It all depends on whether you assume a continued longterm growth in a country’s economy.”