PROSPECTS IN EXPORT TRADE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23648, 4 November 1938, Page 12

PROSPECTS IN EXPORT TRADE

NEW ZEALAND MARKET PURCHASING POWER PER HEAD (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) j LONDON. Oct. 10. The Manchester Guardian Commercial publishes information on world textiles, and says that reports received from correspondents in the big textile markets of the world, on the prospects for trade during the next 12 months, are on the whole discouraging to all save the very enterprising and the very optimistic. The keenness of competition is still a dominant factor in a majority of markets, and with it go the problems of trade agreements, tariffs quotas, exchange restrictions and ths like. The report on prospects for the Indian market, for instance, as one might have guessed, is one of almost unrelieved gloom. In the South African market, too, pressure on the British Government is needed to secure better terms for British imports. The capacity of New Zealand to continue buying British goods has shown no diminution in spite of what may have been prophesied—rather the reverse. Indeed, there have been criticisms of the Dominion’s greater yolums of imports chiefly from Britain because it has helped to lower her credit balances in London, though not seriously. “The sound economic condition ol the Dominion,” says the journal, us evidenced in the exceptional volume of her exports, which at the end of the last financial year, March 31, were, a record for any similar period. The policy of the country is that prosperity shall be shared as much as possible among the people, and the raising or the wages minimum has led to greater circulation of money, which has undoubtedly benefited the retailers of household and personal goods and caused a greater demand on British manufacturing houses. FOREIGN COMPETITION “Except for a fall in the price of wool, there is no indication of a diminution of export trade, and consequently in New Zealand’s power to purchase. But sellers of British goods should realise the keenness of foreign endeavour to obtain orders in a country with so high a purchasing power per head as New Zealand—the highest in the world —and makfe the most of their opportunities, not being misled by the comparative smallness of the Dominion’s population: make the most also of the pro-British sentiment of the people and the highly favourable British tariff preference." In the British textile trade contracts with New Zealand there Is believed to be keenness: Manchester manufacturers are strongly represented in the textile goods sold in the Dominion. In some of the lines there is competition from Japan, especially in apparel and piece goods, but nof to any serious extent. Fashions In New Zealand largely follow those in Britain. It is remarkable how quickb' fashions may be seen in New Zealand cities. To some extent American fashions have their influence, especially in Auckland. It seems, however, that the demand, will be for the better British clothes, piece-dyed and near fancy weaves, and for novelty types of cloth which are being svold in the British market. At one tirrie Paris fashions greatly influenced the New Zealand textile market, but it is not so now.