Agreement on meat marketing closer

Press, 20 September 1985, Page 1

Agreement on meat marketing closer

By

HUGH STRINGLEMAN,

farm editor The Meat Board and exporting companies are getting closer to an agreement to return sheepmeats exporting to private enterprise over the next three years. A meeting of the Meat Industry Council on Monday is expected to result in such an agreement between the board and the Meat Industry Association, representing the companies. Publication of the schedule of prices to farmers for the start of the new season, on October 1, depends on a resolution of the exporting scheme for the future and upon Government guarantees for board borrowing next year. The board had intended to publish the bad-news schedule in advance of October 1 as fanners are anxious to know the worst about lamb prices for 198586. The removal of all Government and industry sub-

sidies and a return to a “pure-market” schedule are expected to result in advance payments of up to ?10 a lamb less for some grades next season. The board has been under Government and industry pressure, however, to return sheepmeats exporting to private enterprise. The Government also wants to do away with Reserve Bank funding of primary product price stabilisation schemes. The board, and its bankers, want the Reserve Bank funding replaced by some alternative Government guarantees, without which the board will find it extremely difficult to raise up to ?1000 million in loans to buy sheep and lamb carcases from farmers next season. So the Government has used its guarantee approval as a lever on the board to get its members to agree to relaxing controls over sheepmeats exporting. The Government sug-

gested that approval for companies to offer schedule, prices to farmers for stock which will be further processed might be one method of relaxing the centralised control the board has exerted over all' export sheepmeats in the last three years. A meeting in Wellington yesterday between the board and the companies’ representatives is reported to have found that such a proposal would be administratively unworkable. Other agreements are now being worked out and are expected to be formalised at Monday’s meeting of the M.I.C. The board has already said quite firmly that it wants a new marketing scheme to be fixed for a three-year period: the Government has also said firmly that any scheme must show a planned return to private enterprise marketing.