Growth in exports

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32701, 2 September 1971, Page 12

Growth in exports

In five years, New Zealand’s exports to Australia had grown 100 per cent to something more than s9sm. However, in the same period, Australia’s exports to New Zealand had grown only a little better than 30 per cent to $252m, the president of the Associated Chamber of Manufactures of Australia (Mr H. N. Herford) said in Christchurch yesterday.

Mr Herford, who was addressing the eighth annual conference of manufacturers from New Zealand and Australia, said that the sum of $252 million was not to be sneezed at. “The question here is not whether the sums involved are healthy as they stand, but whether they could not have been healthier than they were, and whether and by what method they’ll be a lot healthier in the next five years. "We think they could have been, and we hope in these talks to offer suggestions greatly to increase the trade flow—from both sides of the Tasman—in the next five years,” he said. Mr Herford said that Britain’s entry into the E.E.C. would have grave repercussions for Australia and New Zealand.

“We are envious, though not jealous, that New Zealand’s breathing space for the continued sale of its agricultural products in Britain is greater than our own..

“But, proportionately to our separate countries' total international trade, New Zealand’s problem is greater than Australia’s on a long-term basis,” he said.

Mr Herford said that both countries had seen some of the great economic advances of the last few years being eroded by inflationary measures which appeared to defy quick solution.

“We see the United States dollar crumbling on the pinnacle it has enjoyed for so long, and the United States taking measures which seem to savour of panic and which make our export trading to North America an effort of increasing difficulty and complexity. “All over the world, we see markets for our rural products—greater, still, than 50 per cent of Australia’s exports and more than 80 per cent of New Zealand’s—being strangled by quotas, tariffs and other imposts and restrictions while hundreds of millions of people remain illclad and ill-fed,” he said.