Apparel move defended

Press, 25 May 1977, Page 2

Apparel move defended

Wellington

The apphrel arrangements under the New Zealand Australia Free Trade Agreement were defended yesterday by the Minister of Trade and Industry (Mr Adams-Schnei-def).

He was strongly critical in an address to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce of assertions that the arrangement would lead to widespread unemployment in the clothing industry. The Minister said manufacturers had been warned as long ago as 1974 of the fragility of an arrangement

[which had see.; exports of clothing to Australia rise ifrom SI.3M in 1970 to S2OM at the end of last year. “The S36M export potential talked about by the New Zealand industry is no more than that — export potential,” the Minister said. He added the figure was based on January, 1977 exports, “which could well have been seasonally high." [ “With the exceptions of a few companies which might have been gearing up for sales to this level over all, the industry is cutting back from expectations.” He said that even if the

industry had been geared to sell S3OM worth and could now sell only S2OM, this would represent a reduction of 810 M in a total output of riOOM. “That is 5 per cent, which when related to a labour force of 22,000 in the apparel industry, could hardly put almost half of them, as some spokesmen suggested, out of work,” Mr Adams-Schneider said.

The true perspective in which to view the apparel agreement was that sales to Australia grew to something like S2OM in 1976 and created more jobs.