LARGER PROFITS

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 272, 12 August 1932, Page 11

LARGER PROFITS

British Distributors CONSUMERS LOSE BENEFIT Ottawa, August 10. Interviewed at Ottawa, Mr. E. J. Hogan, ex-Premier of Victoria, said that his investigations In London had convinced him that a revival of profiteering was one of the principal causes in the British people’s present inability to buy Australian goods. Illustrating this contention, he pointed out that British distributors and traders were making larger profits now than ever previously. The cost of living in Britain was 43 per cent, higher now than before the war, although the wholesale prices of commodities in Britain were 7 per cent, lower than before the war, showing a margin of 50 per cent Australian producers were selling wheat at S 3 per cent, lower, butter at 8.7 per cent lower, mutton at 23 per cent lower, lamb at 11 per cent lower, apples at 52 per cent lower, and wool at 12.42 per cent, lower than In July, 1914, but the consumers were not getting the benefit of this fall in prices. In the seven years from 1922 to 1929 Australian imports from and Interest payments to Britain were £3OO million more than Australia received for her exports to Britain. Ho added that the British bondholders had made no sacrifice to help Australia. A reduction In the Interest charges payable to Britain was necessary to Australia, also a drastic reduction In distributors’ and retailers’ profits. “These are," he said, “economic necessities to both Britain and Australia in order to Increase consumption and make trade flourish again, replacing the present condition of economic stagnation which the Ottawa Conference Is striving to relieve.”