Export awards

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34021, 10 December 1975, Page 20

Export awards

Sir, — On your financial pages, I read that Tasman Vaccine Laboratory, Ltd, had made another loss. On two separate occasions since, I have seen photographs in your paper of presentations of export awards to this company. How in all conscience can this firm, or any other, justify an expert award under such circumstances, particularly when a major component of the loss was incurred in overseas trading. Surely an expert award, with all its pomp and ceremony, cannot ignore profitability? — Yours, etc., RED. December 2, 1975.

[Mrs E. A. King, executive secretary of the Trade Promotion Council, replies: “The award is the Governor-Gen-eral’s Award for Exporting, which is made on the recommendation of the council, an advisory body to the Minister of Overseas Trade. The award is not made, or withheld, according to whether a company makes a profit, or loss, in a particular year. Applicants are assessed on their ability to sustain continued outstanding export development for at least eight years. (A company must first have won an Export Award — which is made on the basis of export achievements during a minimum three year period — and then have continued exporting for at least a further five years.) Long-term outstanding export development under all conditions — bad as well as good — is the basis for the grant of the award.”]