E.E.C.’s £582m trade surplus

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32879, 30 March 1972, Page 11

E.E.C.’s £582m trade surplus

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

BRUSSELS, March 29. The Common Market had a trade surplus of £sB2m last year, compared with a deficit of £l6Bm in 1970.

Exports to third countries rose 12 per cent last year, to £19,478m, and imports from those countries increased by only 8 per cent, to £18,876m. Internal trade between E.E.C. member-States rose 15 per cent to total £18,930m, a figure calculated on the basis of exports to each other. The figures show that E.E.C. exports to most areas of the world except Asia grew more rapidly than imports. The Community deficit with Asia doubled to £1,424m, last year. The Community’s surplus

with other West European countries increased to £2,827m from £2,398m. The 1970 deficit with Britain of £l32m became a modest surplus of £44m last year.

The Six reduced their deficit with the United States by half, because of a fall in imports from that country. The figure for last year was £493m, compared with £925m in 1970. FARM PRICES It is reported from Brussels that Britain and her fellowCommon Market candidates, the Irish Republic, Denmark and Norway, today formally, accepted the Community’s farm price and reform package adopted by the Ministers of Agriculture last Friday. Britain said that she went along with the increases although she considered them too high, and that she would have liked to see a better balance struck between cereals and livestock, with less of an increase in grain prices. In London, the chairman of the Labour Party (Mr Anthony Wedgwood Benn, called on Dr Sicco Mansholt, President of the E.E.C. Commission, to insist that Britain must hold a referendum on joining the Community. Mr Benn was replying in a letter to Dr Mansholt’s recent statement that he was ashamed, as a Socialist, to see British Socialists adopting a negative attitude towards the Common Market.