Duty will be sought on imported wheat

Press, 11 September 1986, Page 2

Duty will be sought on imported wheat

By

HUGH STRINGLEMAN

farm editor

Encouraged by a statement yesterday from the Ministers of Customs and Agriculture, wheatgrowers have decided to bring a case for a countervailing duty against imported wheat as soon as possible.

The chairman of United Wheatgrowers, Mr Ness Wright, said the countervailing duty action was one way of alleviating a desperate financial position looming for New Zealand growers as the big growing countries fought an international trade war with subsidised production.

The Government has decided the New Zealand wheat and flour industries will be deregulated in February. Local growers will not have to be paid any more than the ruling .world prices, which are at present about $220 a tonne, compared with the 1986 guaranteed price from the Wheat Board of $274.

A delegation of growers, agricultural merchants, independent millers, and supporting specialists met the Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Caygill, and the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moyle, in Wellington on Tuesday. The meeting became quite heated, it is believed, with the farm leaders warning of the imminent collapse of the wheat industry. Mr Wright said yesterday the Government would not reverse or suspend the deregulation and that the Ministers still did not realise the seriousness of the immediate problems facing growers. However, yesterday Mr Moyle and the Minister of Customs, Mrs Shields, said in a statement that the Government would not hesitate to take countervailing or anti-dumping action should there be any evidence of dumped wheat entering New Zealand to the detriment of the wheat industry. It was quite clear that

the price war in the international market had been

sparked off by the United States’ proposal to sell wheat at below market prices to the Soviet Union and China, and this would have serious repercussions on the international price. The Government recognised that the wheat industry was the cornerstone of the arable sector and that the impact of the international price war must not be allowed to fall unfairly on New Zealand growers. Under the control of the industry which exists until February, the Wheat Board is the only agency allowed to import wheat, and does so mostly from Australia. The assistant general

manager of the board, Mr Stewart Mitchell, would not disclose yesterday the board’s present Australian purchasing price. The standard white wheat quotation from the Australian Wheat Board for prompt delivery was on Tuesday SUSIO4 a tonne f.0.b., and the equivalent New Zealand price was $222 a tonne. It is well known, however, that the Australian Wheat Board, which controls all exports of wheat from that country, does deals at prices below its daily quotations, which are themselves based on international prices. What New Zealand growers will have to prove in a countervailing

duty action is that Australian growers are subsidised in some form or that the wheat is being dumped in New Zealand below the cost of production. At the back of all the growers’ fears is the degree of control over the industry by the Fielders-Goodman-Watties group, which owns more than 60 per cent of domestic mills and bakeries. The growers argue that deregulation will allow this group to take wheat and flour from Australia, or elsewhere, direct to the main population centres in the North Island and ignore the local growing industry, mostly in the South Island.