PREFERENTIAL RATES IN AUSTRALIA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 29, 4 February 1910, Page 3

PREFERENTIAL RATES IN AUSTRALIA.

An interesting point affecting British trade in Australia is now being carefully, watched by the 'Board of Trade. It seems that Sir Robert Best, the Commonwealth Minister for Trade and Custom?, recently complained that "the British manufacturer presumed to know Australian requirements belter than Australasians themselves," and drew attention to the serious decline in British trade with the Commonwealth. The percentage of British goods imported into Australia, tho "memorandum stated, was :— ln 1905, 50.04 ; ia 1906 it was 53.66; in 1907 it was 52.92; and in 1908, 51.54 — a decline ,of 3£ per cent, in three years. This had been going on for many years. 'In reply to this the Board of Trade points out that the preferential rates of import duty accorded by Australia to certain British goods only came into force in the latter part of 1907, and tliat the decline in the proportion of British imports iuto Australia shown by Sir Robert Best to have been going on between 1905 and 1907 was checked 111 1908. So far as can be gathered from the record of exports from the United Kingdom, the figures of Australian imports from this country for the Au-rent year (1909) will show. ,an improvement as compared with 1 those , for 1908.