BRITISH PLAN OF INVESTMENT: EXPORT BASIS

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 October 1948, Page 6

BRITISH PLAN OF INVESTMENT: EXPORT BASIS

WASHINGTON, October 14.

Details of Britain’s four-year capital investment plan, which will run parallel with the F.uropean Recovery Plan, and which is designed to build a firm base under the country’s export drive, were disclosed in the magazine Business Week today. The article was written about the recent visit by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Stafford Cripps) to America. It said that Sir Stafford Cripps had outlined the following programme to officials and business 1. The investment of 2,000,000,000 dollars in agriculture, including 600,000,000 dollars in farm machinery alone; production to be increased by 20 per cent. The output of bread grains would be raised by 60 percent., that of other grains by 25 per cent., sugar beet by 20 per cent., and eggs by 60 per cent.

Housing Programme 2. The investment of 4,000,000,000 dollars in housing. 3. The investment of 480,000,000 dollars for the modernisation of coal mines, to bring their production to 255,000,000 tons a year by 1952. 4. The investment of 550,000,000 dollars in new steel plants and the modernisation of old. ones, to provide an increased output of 13 per cent. 5. The investment of 380,000,000 dollars in oil refineries, to increase production by 450 per cent., to 25,500,000 tons of refined petroleum a year. 6. The investment of 1,600,000,000 dollars in electricity projects to make their productive capacity in 1952 15,000,000 kilowatts. 7. A guarantee of a 20 per cent, increase of exports to all Marshall Plan countries. 8. The extension of the chemical industry to provide all domestic needs and expand exports. 9. An increase in the output of synthetic textile fibres by 100 per cent., and of rayon cloth by 35 per cent.

Three Additional Weapons Business Week said that three additional weapons would be used to reduce dollar deficits and achieve a balance of payments by 1951: (1) The reduction still further of imports from the Western Hemisphere, and an increase in exports; and (2) an increase in purchases in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the financing of production developments in those areas; and (3) the stimulation of exports from Africa and South-East Asia to the United States and the rest of the Western Hemisphere. The article expressed admiration of the way in which Britain had tackled and was planning to tackle her problems.