EXPORT QUOTAS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22204, 6 March 1934, Page 6

EXPORT QUOTAS

A STRONG CONDEMNATION RECOVERY PROCESS RETARDED > (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, March 5. The menace of the British proposal to impose quotas ou exports from Australia and New Zealand was stressed by Mr A. O. Davidson, general manager of the Bank of New South Wales, who, accompanied by Mrs Davidson, is passing through Auckland by the Aorangi on his way to England. Mr Davidson is making a combined business and holiday trip, and expects to be away from Australia for about eight months. Reviewing Australian conditions, Mr Davidson said that the Commonwealth, like New Zealand, depended on world markets both for the prices of its products and on the capacity of those markets to absorb freely the whole of the exportable production. A full measure of recovery in .cither Australia or New Zealand must depend on world recovery—rising prices for primary products and at the same time an increase in the capacity of world markets to absorb those products. “ Apart from this • predominating factor,” Mr Davidson continued, “ Australian conditions are showing a steady improvement. Her fine wools have met remarkably higher prices this season, and as wool-growing is so important in the economic life of the country, this alone has afforded an appreciable measure of relief to both private and public finance. Anxiety is still felt, however, for the outlook for other products. The future of wheat is still very gloomy, and for dairy produce and meat exceedingly doubtful. The depression struck Australia‘about 18 months or two years earlier than New Zealand as the prices of wool and wheat collapsed early in 1029. New Zealand, ou the other hand, had dairy produce and meat forming a large proportion of her exports in place of wheat and she was able to carry on for this longer period. Now both countries are facing the same problems with regard to these commodities and both are looking anxiously for some revival in the markets for dairy produce and meat. “Further anxiety is added by the new agricultural policy of Great Britain,” Mr Davidson continued. “If the principle of keeping the English market for the English farmer is persisted in to such an extent that quotas are placed on the exports of Australia and New Zealand to Great Britain our exports must be. curtailed. This policy must have a most serious effect, not only on the economics of Australia and New Zealand, but also on those of Great Britain. The Commonwealth and the Dominion will be faced with two alternatives—they must either find free markets in which to dispose of their goods or else they must have forced on them reduced -production, which would have the most serious effects on public and private finance. If they are prevented from producing as much as they can and from selling the goods they produce the inescapable result will be that their capacity to purchase manufactured goods from Great Britain will be reduced. , “ It is qqite possible,” added Mr Davidson, that with low prices and a risk of bad seasons the British exporter and manufacturer may suffer very consider'ably as n result of this special consideration shown to the British farmer. Increased eihployment in British agriculture might easily bfe more than offset by increased unemployment throughout the British manufacturing industries. It isi greatly to be regretted ikhat Great Brltain should have thought fit to enter on such restrictive policies when every effort is necessary towards an expansion of international trade.” *