No growth in exports to Japan expected

Press, 24 October 1984, Page 21

No growth in exports to Japan expected

From

ROY VAUGHAN

in Kyoto New Zealand’s food exporters can no longer expect any large-scale growth in the volume of their exports to Japan, because the Japanese people are now adequately fed, according to Japan’s Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Mr Shinjiro Yamamura. In an address to delegates attending the eleventh Japan-New Zealand Business Council Conference at Kyoto, Mr. Yamamura said Japan’s demand for agricultural, forestry, and fishery products, which increased steadily during high economic growth, was now stagnent. He said the diet of Japanese people had reached saturation point both quantitively and qualitatively. According to official Japanese figures the country’s per capita calorie intake has been virtually fixed at slightly less than 2600 kilocalories for more than 10 years now. The net result of this according to Mr Yamamura was that Japan has had to reduce its own agricultural production. This made unlikely a continued increase in the

volume of imports of agricultural, forestry, and fishery products, he said. These items made up 60 per cent of the total value of New Zealand’s trade with Japan. Regardless of his predictions the Japanese Government has eased trade barriers on a number of food items this year. Access for fruit puree and paste, fruit pulp, non-citrus juice, beef, oranges, and legumes has been made easier.

In a comprehensive paper issued at the conference, designed to arouse interest in boosting exports. New Zealand fruit and vegetable exporters have taken the view that there is generally plenty of scope to expand the value of their exports. Horticultural exports to Japan are now worth almost as much as meat exports and New Zealand is now by far Japan’s largest supplier of fresh vegetables, according to the Commercial Minister at New Zealand’s Tokyo Embassy, Mr Gerard Cheyne. Japan was also New Zealand’s second largest market for dairy products. “The challenge for the future will be to move our trade upmarket where qual-

ity and other considerations can assume greater importance than price and where greater security lies,” he said.

He said New Zealand trade officials had already identified three areas deserving special attention. They were lamb, horticulture, and forest products. Various studies are already under way or planned, aimed at boosting these exports. There was likely to be New Zealand involvement in more than 100 food fairs in Japan this year. New Zealand food would be on display in resturants, stores and other places, and he said there would also be numerous other one-off promotions. While Mr Yamamura’s tones may be pessimistic for New Zealand, Mr Cheyne said that Japan was a wealthy market whose consumers were becoming more prosperous by the year, and it was a society in transition which had demonstrated a great capacity to absorb new ideas. It was a market where consumption patterns were still forming where as in Europe and the United States consumption patterns were relatively settled, he said.