EMPIRE SURVEY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22425, 4 September 1947, Page 5

EMPIRE SURVEY

DEFICIT IN DOLLARS AIMS OF CONFERENCE (9.30 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 3. The task before the Commonwealth financial conference will be one of coordination of the Commonwealth countries’ plans and integrating their import programmes, says The Times’ Parliamentary correspondent. When the Commonwealth's minimum needs for dollar imports can be assessed as a whole, the other side of the problem—the setting of targets for exports to hard currency countries—will remain. Here the danger of blunting the united export drive and reducing its effectiveness by overlapping and wasteful competition calls for a degree of planning and co-operation which could be achieved only in the sort of conference which has been arranged.

It will be possible to estimate the dollar deficit over the whole sterling area in the light of co-ordinated plans for cutting imports and increasing exports. Such an estimate will take into account the existing dollar and gold resources and possible increments to these resources through joint action. Unless Canada can get enough dollars from her exports to pay for imports from the United States she will have to make radical changes in her entire economic structure, said the Minister of Finance, Mr. Douglas Abbott, on the eve of his departure for London to attend the second annual meeting of the International Bank of Reconstruction.

Mr. Abbott said that in' London he would have an opportunity to discuss world financial problems and the dollar situation with other Ministers of Finance and officials, but he was not going to London to negotiate any agreement. “I still believe that the post-war programme to which we and other countries have committed ourselves can be made to work by fresh energy and strong constructive leadership, but nobody can deny that time is running out,” he said.