EXPORTS AND IMPORTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23487, 26 October 1939, Page 10

EXPORTS AND IMPORTS

The trade figures for September, which are published to-day, complete the record for the first threequarters of the calendar year and for the first quarter of the season of production and export, which opens in July. The results invite examination to discover what has been achieved by the rigid control of exchange and imports instituted toward the end of last year. One product of the system is already known without any analysis of figures. Traders are emphatic about the disruption of their business caused not only by the actual restrictions, but by the uncertainty they have brought. Even the manufacturers, whose activities were to expand so that the gap caused by reduced imports would be filled, complain of difficulty in obtaining from overseas stocks of essential raw materials. As a result of these conditions, the imports for the first nine months of the current year are £1,480,000 "lower in value than for the corresponding portion of 1938. Exports for the same period are down by £662,000, so that the gain, on balance is £BIB,OOO. It is a pitiful result for all the shackles imposed on commerce and industry. The record for the first three months of the export season is better. Imports are down by £2,558,000 and exports by £137,000, leaving a gain of £2,421,000. This makes the result for the preceding six months all the worse, but does contain the promise of better things to come. They will need to be better, for the arrangements made with various firms not to uplift the proceeds of sales means that overseas obligations of a difficult and risky nature are being created. Meantime, the remedy deals with the symptoms alone, and leaves the cause, a recklessly expansionist j domestic policy, untouched.