NEW MARKETS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 226, 24 August 1932, Page 2

NEW MARKETS

DETERRENT TO EFFORTS. POWER OF BOARDS. Much has been said about the need tor businessmen to seex r.e*,v markets tor the produce or New Zealand. but little about the difficulties with wi.ieh they are confronted (.says a statement' by the Associated Chambers or Commerce!. One great deterrent. if not fatal drawback, to any : efforts they might make is the . power which is at present vested in the produce control boards to take i "absolute control” ot ail the produce . or the industries which they govern. Absolute control means, of course, that individual marketing by merchants is suppressed in ravour of complete control by the boards. The . disastrous failure or control of New . Zealand dairy produce in 1926-27 added to the failure of control the i world over wherever it has been .tried, says the statement. Tire . Dairy Beard has now abandoned it. and the Meat Board has never applied it. but it is at present in force Iby the Fruit Board and Honey ; Board. Thus the merchant is at present prevented by law rrom trad- ! ing abroad in fruit and honey. That j precludes him from rinding new mar--1 kets for those commodities. THREAT OF CONTROL. It is true that the merchant may i still market dairy produce and meat, j but the uncertainty with which he is i always faced is whether absolute control will again be enforced, since power to take tins action still reposes with i tiie boards under tire empowering , Acts ci the Legislature. A merchant cannot be blamed for his re-; iluctance to spend money exploring the possibilities or foreign markets, establishing connections and building up a trade when the boards hold the power to resort to absolute control at any time and take over his trade. It • is a risk that is more than an ordinary trade risk, and one which the merchant is not prepared to shoulder. l lt may be said that the experience ; with dairy produce control should ; i preclude any likelihood or a repetition or that experiment, but when the dairy control legislation was passed it was with the understanding that absolute control would not be enrorced except in a crisis. Vet that power was used without justification and merchants had taken away from them the markets they had established. Owing to it.s present policy of absolute control, the Fruit Board is constantly losing opportunities to fur- j ther its trade, since merchants have 1 numerous opportunities to make di- i root r.o.b. sales, which, however. ! they have no power to effect. The producers are daily losing the benefit joi free and progressive competition: they are entirely in the hands of the ; i board. The same applies to the 'Honey Board, despite the recent em- j Iphatic affirmation of the absolute! 'control policy or the board by the Na-I tiona! Beekeepers' Association —! which body by no means embraces or : speaks for the whole of the lior.cy producers. The utter railure or con- : troi over honey is shown by the fact i that the sales of New Zealand honey ! in the United Kingdom—achieved at enormous expense to the producers — i declined from 334 tons in 192-3 to 429 I tons in 1930. According to the ; : monthly Abstract of Statistics for j January, 1932. the whole export (not sales) of honev from New Zealand to I all countries for 1931 was only 261 | tons.

No further evidence need be produced in view of the plain statement of the Minister ot Internal Affairs (Hon. A. Hamilton) who told a farmers' rally at Dannevirke on August 6 that the farmers ‘’were not best qualified to do their own marketing.” He said that "if the farmers' boards did not vigorously tackle this phase, then the Government might have to appoint a board of experts to try to place the Dominion's products in foreign markets which were not yet exploited.'’ THE REAL EXPERTS.

It is noteworthy that Mr Hamilton rna kes no distinction between producers’ boards which are at present exercising absolute control and those which are not —that is. those which prohibit the me reliant altogether and those which are willing to let him out on the end of a rope. The Minister warns them all. An oversight by Mr Hamilton, however, is that the age-old experts of trade —they who have irom time immemorial established the markets of any nation —are the individual merchants. New Zealand merchants are not antagonistic to any competition by control boards in overseas markets, because they have nothing to lear from that competition. It is the dormant threat of absolute control and market seizure that deters them from seeking new markets. The Government could clear away in one stroke the chief obstacle to the creation of new markets by removing the compulsory clauses from the control board Acts. This would give the merchants freedom and security to explore new fields and prevent the producers’ boards from forsaking at any time the substance of individual marketing for the shadow of co-operative dictation to the world’s markets.

The compulsory power of the producers’ boards is a typical example of that interference, through the Government, with private initiative and enterprise which is having so serious an effect on the whole country. What New Zealand needs for a revival of its trade and prosperity, either as regards it.s exporting industry or any other industry, is not added restriction and added interference, but the relaxing of existing control and handicaps on private enterprise.