Against Granting Of Shop Monopolies

Northern Advocate, 14 March 1947, Page 4

Against Granting Of Shop Monopolies

(P.A.) NAPIER. This Day. “The granting of monopolies to consumer cooperative stores calls for the ■Wrongest possible protest and action, for it amounts to discrimination against u cross-section of retailers who during the war and since have given loyal and excellent service in this country dirough the various rationing schemes,” said Mr J. R. Dench, of Christchurch, .it the conference of the Associated Chambers of Commerce. Mr Dench moved a remit, which was carried, urging the executive to examine the monopoly effects of granting special trading privileges by the Government to consumer cooperatives, and also investigate the effects upon the incidence of taxation of the continuing extension of consumer cooperative trading. “A serious view is taken of the encouragement by the Government of these tax-free concerns,” said Mr Dench.

He maintained that, while the present excessively high rates of taxation continued, all schemes for preferential relief should be closely scrutinised and unfair ones refused. Professor A. H. Tocker, professor of economics at Canterbury University College, said consumer cooperative enterprises had been tried in New Zealand before and, except in the mining areas of the West Coast, where special conditions applied, all had failed. Concern over the development and growth of State-protected consumer cooperative stores was expressed in a resolution passed by the New Zealand Master Butchers’ Federation at Gisborne.