Bob Jones sees cure in invisibles

Press, 2 July 1985, Page 1

Bob Jones sees cure in invisibles

New Zealanders should redirect their investment energies from exports and agriculture into “invisibles,” said the leader of the New Zealand Party, Mr Bob Jones, in Christchurch last evening. He told a meeting of more than 200 Rotarians that New Zealand had, in monetary terms, earned more from exports than it paid in imports in the last decade, yet there had been huge and perennial deficits on its exchange transactions.

..This was because of the invisibles — interest charges, transport, dividends to overseas companies, and other payments abroad.

Today, Britain earned half her foreign receipts from invisible earnings, particularly banking, insurance and financial investments.

“On my assessment New

Zealand is every bit as much and indeed more so, an investment-minded nation than is England',” he said. “The structures now exist for New Zealanders to go forth and eat up the outside world as financial operators and investors,” said Mr Jones. Within a few decades New Zealand could earn more from its commercial property investors’ off-shore activities than it now did from many of its traditional agricultural exports. “The export treadmill we are on is a proven futility as the road to prosperity The clearly identifiable problem is the out-flow in invisibles.

“In other words we must desist concerning ourselves with the quantity of our exports and begin to concern ourselves with the quality," said Mr Jones.