Australia to protest about dumping

Press, 31 October 1984, Page 40

Australia to protest about dumping

NZPA-AAP Canberra Australia has protested “in the strongest terms” to the European Economic Community about its plans to sell surplus butter on world markets, said two Federal Ministers. Dairy producing countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, have called on the E.E.C. countries to cancel or postpone the plan. A report from Geneva said that the E.E.C. wanted to off load 100,000 tonnes of butter. However, the Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Trade Minister, Mr Lionel Bowen, and the Primary Industry Minister, Mr John Kerin, quoted a figure of 200,000 tonnes when they condemned the action.

They said that the butter would be exported from E.E.C. Government-owned intervention stocks and sold below the minimum price, about ?Austl4so per tonne, set by the G.A.T.T. (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) International Dairy Arrangement. The international butter market had been undermined seriously and the viability of the arrangement had been threatened by the move, they said. The Ministers said that they were concerned about the implications of the E.E.C.’s actions for all sections of the Australian dairy industry, which already faced depressed export prices and difficulties in making export sales. They said that the E.E.C.

had chosen deliberately to flout its obligations under the dairy arrangement “in a manner unprecedented in international commodity arrangements.” ■