OTTAWA AGREEMENTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 83, 7 April 1936, Page 12

OTTAWA AGREEMENTS

EXTENSION URGED

The British Government was urged to secure new trade agreements with .the Dominions in extension and amplification of the Ottawa Agreements, in a report of the Association of Britisn Chambers of Commerce issued recently (states the "Daily Telegraph"). Such new agreements, says the report, should preferably be negotiated with each of the Dominions separately without calling them together at an Imperial conference. The negotiations should be opened at the earliest opportunity and should not be deferred until 1937, when the Ottawa Agreements expire. ' In making these new agreements the report submits that a policy should be adopted of overlaying the Ottawa Agreements affecting specific commodities, and so maintaining the basic conception of economic co-operation but giving' effect to it by the exchange of concrete as well as existing general undertakings which are regarded as essential.

In the association's view all discussions in regard to the renewal or revision of the agreements should seek as their main object an increased interchange of products.

The report states that there is , a considerable amount of dissatisfaction among representatives of many industries with the way in which the articles of the agreements have been implemented as well as with the methods adopted by and with the working of the tariff boards.