Approach to I.M.F. rejected by P.M.

Press, 4 October 1984, Page 8

Approach to I.M.F. rejected by P.M.

NZPA-AAP London The New Zealand Prime Minister, Mr Lange, has bluntly rejected any chance of an approach to the International Monetary Fund to solve New Zealand’s foreign debt problems and has painted a rosy picture for the future.

“You can’t think of a country more lousy with prosperity. It is dripping with abundance,” Mr Lange said in an interview with the “Financial Times” printed yesterday. “When I stay at the Wal-dorf-Astoria (one of New York’s most prestigious hotels) you will know we are going to the I.M.F. “While I am in budget accommodation (he stayed

elsewhere in New York recently) we are running our own ship." Mr Lange said New Zealand was in a buoyant mood with remarkable employeremployee co-operation and would trade its way through its debt problems.

“We have all the formulae in place for keeping the momentum going,” he said. “It would be a dreadful mistake to give any impression abroad that we were about to lean on the advice of the international receiver.”

Mr Lange, who this week completed an official visit to London, said New Zealand must stop exporting jobs and create them at home.

“The change is to shift

New Zealand from producing in response to subsidies, which are politically sensitive abroad, and very much towards the market place,” he said. Mr Lange said his Government’s economic ideology was simply for efficiency.

State enterprises which failed to make a profit were “a failure of philosophy" while there should be no tax breaks for non-productive “pointless corporate indulgences like amalgamations, mergers and take-overs.” The most effective price constraint was competition but more needed to be done on disclosure of corporate information and anti-trust legislation in New Zealand, he'said.