Millers told to get ready for greater competition

Press, 13 April 1984, Page 2

Millers told to get ready for greater competition

Blenheim reporter

An outline of the reasons for the recently completed review of the wheat and flour industries was given by the Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Templeton, at the opening of the New Zealand Flour Millers’ Association’s annual conference in Picton yesterday. Mr Templeton said that what had previously been a tightly regulated and protected industry would soon be subject to greater market forces. C.E.R. meant that after 1995 Australian flour would have unrestricted access to New Zealand.

The report on the review outlined the options of retaining the present Wheat Board system for marketing wheat and flour. The review team favoured the option removing Wheat Board control over flour.

“I must emphasise that neither that option nor the other points raised in the report represent Government policy,” said Mr Templeton.

“The review should be seen more as a ‘think piece’ exploring the implications of C.E.R. and identifying arrangements that might best enable the industry to compete in a C.E.R. context,” he said. The crux of the matter was to decide on what was best for the industry as a whole, and what was good for New Zealand. By the

1990 s the country was going to have to compete very hard.

“After we get submissions and comments, the Government will look at the issues again. The Cabinet’s reaction will certainly be influenced by what you and other interested parties say,” said Mr Templeton. Members of the association would have to decide how to respond to the needs of the 1980 s and beyond that decade.

“The decisions you make today will affect people 10 years after as surely as day follows night,” he said.

He would like to think all were looking towards increased openness in markets.

“We can only move gradually to deregulate, and we are doing that, but we cannot give up the requirement for regulation in some areas. The basic objective must be to free-up our economy in a sensible way. We must build sensibly on the concept of the market. “We must see ourselves not as producers but as people who serve the market, serve the consumers in New Zealand, in Australia and in the region and, I hope, in the world at large.” Mr Templeton said that if New Zealand was to become a broader-based exporter beyond traditional exports it must look to the market and determine what it wanted and how it should be serviced.

It was not generally realised that in the last 10 years New Zealand had become a significant manufacturing exporter. Manufacturers exported only 8 per cent of their output in 1975-76; (hey boosted that to 15 per cent in 1981-82. In 1982-83 manufactured exports reached $lBOO million or nearly a quarter of total exports. In the last two quarters manufacturing exports had increased to one-third of total exports. He said that the challenge facing the industry was to solve the problems of exporting on a wider scale, maximising production and participating in the export drive. “The time to get under way is now. We have got C.E.R. under way and it is providing new opportunities in our basic market. We have export incentives for another three or four years and they are of immense importance in getting exporting under way, particularly in finding new markets.” He challenged the industry to face up to change, look at the new technology, face up to exporting and C.E.R., and look at how effective it could become as part of the market economy.