Good year for exports, says P.M.

Press, 14 April 1984, Page 8

Good year for exports, says P.M.

Parliamentary reporter The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, has forecast a good year for exports this year. Sir Robert was commenting on the Reserve Bank’s latest monthly bulletin, (report, page 26) which expressed concern about export returns. The bulletin said that problems in the dairy and meat export returns could persist over the next few years and called for an urgent increase in competitivness, new products and new markets. Sir Robert, however, said there was a world recovery persist through 1984, taking New Zealand prices up. “So it is not a time when I would be preaching gloom on the export side, either in volume or in price,” he said. “I think on the export side,

this should be a good year.”

However, the trade surplus could “diminish somewhat” as one effect of the upturn was an increase in the volume of imports. Balancing this was an “extremely healthy” trans-Tas-man trade, which Sir Robert said had moved ahead “much more rapidly than we thought under C.E.R.” Criticism of high interest rates being offered by a merchant bank were rejected yesterday by Sir Robert. Sir Robert said a radio news report, that South Pacific Merchant Finance, Ltd, was offering deposit interest rates higher than those agreed to by finance houses, was “grossly exaggerated.” The merchant bank, a subsidiary of the National Bank of New Zealand, was criticised in the radio report

by the Finance Houses Association. Sir .Robert said he believed the report had tried to lead the merchant bank’s action back to Mr Spencer Russell, who is about to take up his appointment as the new Governor of the Reserve Bank, after his retirement as general manager of the National Bank. Sir Robert said Mr Russell was not a director of South Pacific Merchant Finance, and had not been since he resigned a month ago. Mr Russell had “nothing whatsoever to do with the kind of rates that were talked about,” Sir Robert said. The bank was a “very tiny operation” of “just a couple of million dollars,” and it would have no effect on the “massive” deposit money that was around.