Random reminder

Press, 28 March 1979, Page 26

Random reminder

FALSE ECONOMY

A disturbing statistic met our eyes in the columns of this newspaper recently. It appears that Wellington is fifty-sixth out of 66 in a list prepared by the London “Financial Times” of the cost of doing business in various capitals and main business centres. The Only places where it is cheaper to do business than in Wellington are Johannesburg, Dar-Es-Salaam, Mexico City, Karachi, Belgrade, Colomba, Lisbon, Nicosia, Salisbury and Peking. And the point about all these places, of course, is that with the possible exception of Johannesburg, hardly any business is done in any of them. While it is no coincidence that the two dearest cities in which to do business, Tokyo and Frankfurt, are also two cities in which absolutely overwhelming amounts of business are actually done. The message is obvious. We will never pull ourselves out of our present economic difficulties so long as Wellington remains such a cheap place i

in which to do business. If we want to regain our place as one of the world’s great trading nations, then we have got to get up there alongside Tokyo and Frankfurt. Because obviously, the dearer your hotel, food and drink prices are, the more the world’s businessmen flock to your doorstep. They are all on expense accounts, you see, and derive a delicious sensation of pleasure from spending enormous amounts of their employers’ money on astronomical taxi charges, wine food and hotel bills. So in order to trade our way out of our present difficulties, and prevent ourselves sinking to the level Of Dar-Es-Salaam, to which we are already perilously close, we have to quintuple, if not sextuple, Wellington’s prices overnight. This will be a bit tough on the inhabitants of Wellington. But they will be suffering for the good of the country as a whole, and that, after all, is the privilege of the inhabitants of a capital city.