Overseas Aid Could Be Given In Wool

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31763, 21 August 1968, Page 14

Overseas Aid Could Be Given In Wool

If New Zealand could not give overseas aid in hard cash, it could perhaps give it in the form of blankets and woollen clothing made from the country’s stockpiles of raw wool.

This suggestion has been made by Mr W. Hindmarsh, a Taupo businessman, in a letter to “The Press”—a suggestion, he says, which would involve the setting up of a new industry for the complete processing of wool, thus using “the annual cash grant which would otherwise be lost overseas." “As an affluent nation, we must accept some responsibility towards those poor and developing nations round the Asian-Pacific rim,” Mr Hindmarsh says. Mr Hindmarsh, the managing director of Hindmarsh Industries, Ltd, a leatherexporting firm, lists five points of his argument for setting up an industfy “for the benefit of Charity." New Zealand, he says, is

continually embarrassed by the costly storage of raw wool, and with a woolprocessing industry, stocks would be progressively lowered.

More employment opportunities would arise.

Cash would be kept in I New Zealand, and under the ; country’s complete control. I The prospect of annual infections of cash into the industry postulates the probability of creating lines which could actually be sold overseas to recover costs, so that the whole industry could possibly become selfsupporting. New Zealand could direct more closely to whom the aid was given. “We hear stories of corruption and graft ! which make us doubtful I about the value of cash ! grants.”