Smelter Duty Complaint

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32251, 20 March 1970, Page 16

Smelter Duty Complaint

(N.Z.PA. Staff Correspondent) TOKYO, March 19.

One of the Japanese partners in the Bluff aluminium smelter project claimed today that its “intricate” financial arrangements had been upset because New Zealand would not lower import duty rates on Japanese machinery and equipment for the plant.

Company officials said duty I rates of up to 40 or 50 per cent on some items had priced Japanese suppliers out of the market. Equipment had to be bought from other countries, upsetting previous financial calculations, and raising the cost of Japanese participa tion.

Mr Masao Anzai, the presi dent of Showa Denko K.K., said: “We are very concerned about this and have appealed to the New Zealand Government to have another look at it.” Another executive, Mr Hachishiro Kamizeki, said: “The entire financial basis of Japanese participation in the project is being hit by extra construction costs.”

Preferential Rates Mr Anzai said he had

earlier understood that smelter equipment not available in New Zealand would be admitted from Japan at Commonwealth preferential duty rates. “This is not the case,’ he said. Showa Denko K.K. and Sumitomo Chemical Company, Ltd, each have a 25 per cenl share in the smelter project The Australian Aluminium Company (Comalco) has th.e remaining 50 per cent. Mr Anzai said the Japanese Government had insisted, when approving Japanese participation, that part of the equity be in the form of de ferred payment exports of machinery and equipment.

“We will not now be able to stick to this,” he said, “and the Japanese companies will have to provide more cash to make up their 50 per cent share.”

Complaints reported from Japan about high rates of duty charged by New Zealand

on equipment for the bluff aluminium smelter project were difficult to understand, the Minister of Customs (Mi Adams-Schneider) said in Wellington yesterday, the Press Association reports.

The Minister said that the Government was giving full effect to the provisions in the agreement between it and the participating parties relating to customs duty on goods imported for the project. “There is nothing in this agreement which provides for the entry of Japanese machinery at' Commonwealth preferential rates,’’ he said.