Jet boats interest visitor from Peru

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33460, 15 February 1974, Page 8

Jet boats interest visitor from Peru

Peru is New Zealand's third-best customer in terms of dairy exports but a former Peruvian Prime Minister at present visiting Christchurch believes that there is a considerable market potential there for New Zealand-made jet boats.

Mr P. G. Beltran, the former publisher of Lima's morning daily, “La Prensa” (The Press), said yesterday that the use of such boats in Peru, and on the waterways of other Latin American countries, could revolutionise water transport.

In a number of South American countries rivers are the main commercial highwavs.

i Mr Beltran had never heard of jet boats until he visited Queenstown this week and had a ride in one. “They are so fantastic and manoeuvrable and need so little water underneath.”

So impressed was he that twice yesterday he visited the C. W. F. Hamilton, Ltd, plant, where they are manufactured, to learn all about them so that he can tell his friends at home of their possibilities.

The fact that jet boats were developed in New Zealand surprised Mr Beltran. “I could have expected such things in the United States but here, in what is primarily a pastoral country, it comes as a big surprise.”

Mr Beltran, who is accompanied by his wife, is on a world tour. His role as former editor and publisher of “La Prensa” ended soon after the present Valasco administration came to power in Peru. The family home in Lima was also destroyed.

The 76-year-old Mr Beltran remains a firm supporter of a free press. “There used to be a free press in my country but let us just say that now it isn’t as free as it used to be.”

In New Zealand he had been impressed with the lack of Government interference in the daiiv oress.

A man with a dedicated belief in democracy, he said that one day political stability would come to the South American continent — the problem was, how long it would take.

Although Peru last year granted diplomatic recognition to Cuba,. Mr Beltran does not believe that Dr Cas-

[ tro will gain much by it “Castro has tried to influence Latin American countries with his political ideas, even to the extent of supporting guerrilla activities in some of them, but he has failed miserably.

“Sometimes I think that too much can be made of Castro. You have to remember that he did not win the population over by his own personal appeal. He happened to be an alternative to the awful dictator, Batista, they had before. That was why he gained the support he did.” Of one thing Mr Beltran is sure — that is that there are no simple solutions to the complex problems facing the developing countries of South America.

Mr Beltran was Peru’s Prime Minister and Minister of Finance between 1959 and 1961. and one of his major problems then was to deal with inflation.