World trading position “a curious mixture”

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32734, 11 October 1971, Page 16

World trading position “a curious mixture”

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, October 8. The world trading position was a curious mixture of national politics, international rivalries, plain selfishness and short-sightedness, the Prime Minister (Sir Keith Holyoake) said in Auckland today.

It was a sad truth, he added, that in a world of plenty, many millions were in quite serious need of even the barest essentials.

Sir Keith Holyoake was speaking at the official opening of the Winstone Wallboards, Ltd, $1,750,000 new gibraltar board plant. The plant, one of the biggest of its kind in the world, produces plaster board in a continuous process, and has an ultimate capacity of 120 to 130 million square feet of board a year. Sir Keith Holyoake said he was particularly impressed by the fact that the plaster board was made from plaster manufactured in Auckland, pumice from the Waikato and cardboard from New Zealand's forest industries.

“This is manufacturing in depth,” he said. "This is the pattern our economy is taking and must continue to take. “Although we’re fundamentally, and traditionally, an agriculturally based economy, we are diversifying and this is not only necessary and logical, it’s essential.” Sir Keith Holyoake said New Zealand must broaden the base of its economy; the manufacturing sector had been growing rapidly, in spite of rising costs and prices. “Over the last decade, the average annual rate of growth in the volume of factory production has been 6.3 per cent. “That’s pretty good, even by world standards.” The Prime Minister said

manufacturing continued to expand at a rate greater than the economy as a whole, and its importance had obviously increasedIt now contributed about 22 per cent of the national income, more than 11 per cent of export earnings, and employed 27 per cent of the labour force.

He said that total exports of manufactured goods for the year to last May, were worth $l3B million—an increase of nearly $2O million over the previous year.

The largest single group was forest products, which earned $47.6 million; other manufactured exports were worth $81.4 million—an increase of nearly 13 per cent over the 1970 May year.

“This is progress, very real and very worthwhile,” he said. He described New Zealand’s trading position as “not too bad,” but added that the country had always to be realistic in forecasting the future, and planning ahead. During August, Sir Keith Holyoake said, the country’s current account picked up, with a surplus of more than $23 million, largely because of increased export receipts, a slowing in the growth of import payments and a virtually stable invisible deficit.

“I do not prophesy,” he added, “that we would continue with that rate of increase.”