PRICE OF TIMBER

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 142, 18 May 1936, Page 2

PRICE OF TIMBER

PROPOSED INCREASES. GOVERNMENT INTERVENES. (By Telegraph.—Special to Standard.) WELLINGTON, May 16. An investigation is to be made immediately, stated the Prime Minister (Ht. Hon. M. J. Savage), to-day, into the reason for the increases in the price of butter boxes and timber. Merchants are being requested to withhold any increase in prices until suM. time as they can prove to the satisfaction of the Government justification for these increases. Mr Savage added ‘that the Minister of Industries and Commerce, and the Commissioner of State Forests, had met the representatives of the sawmilling industry and explained the Government’s attitude in regard to any increase in the price of timber, both for building purposes and the manufacture of butter boxes. As a result of that conference it had been decided that the sawmillers must forward to the Government at the earliest possible moment figures to prove that the anticipated increase in the price of timber is justified. In the meantime, all sawmillers are being advised that they must not increase their prices until such time as their statements and figures have been examined by the Government, and this, declared the Prime Minister, will be done as quickly as possible. Letters are also being sent to all timber merchants requesting them to forward the necessary data to the Government, so that the latter will be a position to decide whether or not increases are justified.