FIRST REDUCTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 83, 5 October 1944, Page 5

FIRST REDUCTION

PRICE OF EMPIRE WOOL

THE TRADE'S VIEW

(Special P.A. Correspondent.)

BRADFORD, October 3. The wool control organisation announced on October 2 a diminution of various war charges, including war risk insurance. It enables the authorities to reduce the issue price of wool for export and new schedules operate here from October 1.

This is the first price reduction in Empire wool since it passed under control at the beginning of the war. The reductions apply to wool and tops exported as such, or when supplied to British spinners and manufacturers for export as yarn or cloth.

The reductions range from approximately 5 per cent, to 10 per cent, on the prices lately ruling for export and vary according to type and quality. These modifications of selling price do not affect the price received by the Dominion growers for their clips, but are facilitated entirely by the reductions in war charges to which wool becomes subject after ■ leaving the grower. The news will be welcomed by New Zealand wool growers, who, without loss to themselves, see their commodity made commercially more attractive to world users.

The new prices do not apply to wool released for the British internal civilian trade, the existing prices for which remain unchanged. The probable reason is that wool for Britain's domestic trade already enjoys the equivalent'of a subsidy.

When the British Government two years ago began paying 15 per cent, for Dominion wool clips this price increase was not passed on in the British civilian trade, presumably as part of an official plan to avoid increased British living costs.

The increase paid to Dominion growers was necessarily added to the export price and to the price at which wool is supplied to the British manufacturers for export as cloth.. The present position is that the existing wool prices for the British civil trade are already lower than those at which Dominion wool is available for export, even after the reductions announced in the latter oil October 2, and that is the probable reason why the British home trade does not share theso wool price reductions.

The wool trade view here is that these reduced wool prices will enhance world confidence in the Empire wool price leyel by demonstrating the official desire to give world consumers the advantage of any possible price reduction. Britain today owns the bulk of the world's exportable wool, and has always regarded her vast wool holding as a world trust to be administered for the common good. The modified prices are welcomed by exporting manufacturers here, and also by overseas buyers of British wool goods, all of whom regard them as of value in promoting an increased British export trade in woollen goods at the earliest possible moment after the war. • r