THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, January 12, 1939. STILL IN THE DARK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23705, 12 January 1939, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, January 12, 1939. STILL IN THE DARK

Regardless of the appeals that have been addressed to him the Minister of Customs still refuses to supply traders with any information with reference to the method under which restrictions are being imposed on the country's imports. His unsympathetic rejoinder to an interviewer's question on Wednesday was that importers could " go on guessing." It is inconceivable that it has not occurred to Mr Nash that guesswork has no place in the orderly conduct of business. Business is a process of calculation, and exact calculation at that. Although a week has passed since the first shock of the working of import control was felt by the trading public nothing has been said or done by responsible Ministers to enable traders to see the future with any clarity. Mr Nash has said not a word, and the Prime Minister's " explanations" have been notable only for the measure of contradiction contained in them. On one point only has Mr Savage been drawn into expressing a positive and intelligible intention, which is that if the legality of the control regulations is successfully challenged, immediate steps will be taken by the Government to reestablish their validity. The Government is determined to proceed as it has begun, even if, in the process, it plunges the country's commerce into a confusion from which it may recover only by costly and laborious stages. It cannot be too strongly urged that the problems confronting members of the business community are being magnified out of all proportion by the Government's stubborn refusal to take them and the consuming public as a whole into its confidence. Importers have no indication, other than that obtainable from an examination of licences already granted, of what classes of goods they may order with a reasonable prospect of securing satisfaction. Moreover, while the Prime Minister continues to define the Government's goal as the progressive enlargement of trade, both internal and external, there is the fact that this year's import requirements are being "measured by the yardstick of the first six months of last year. There is no provision for expansion in such an arrangement, for every trader,

be he merchant, lndentor or retailer, will be expected very largely to regulate a future turnover by figures, approximately a year old, which offer him no scope for increasing his sales. The Prime Minister's answer to that objection, it is to be supposed, is contained in his suggestion that present rulings as to restriction in certain categories may be modified. And since the encouragement of local industry is one of the reasons for import control, it may be supposed that the purpose is to replace imported goods, in warehouses and shops, by goods produced internally. But local industry has scarcely yet had time to enter the stage of reorganisation which must precede expansion of output, so that it is obvious that an indefinite period must elapse before increased local production can hope to restore a proper balance to stocks curtailed arbitrarily by restriction of imports. In the meantime the anxieties of importers are too real to need magnification. Because they can see no way out of their present difficulties, because they do not know as yet to what extent their businesses will suffer permanent harm from a policy of rigid control, they are examining the need for reducing staffs. In Auckland a tentative and seemingly incomplete estimate of probable dismissals ought to be causing the Government as much concern as must be caused to those likely to be affected. And that is merely a beginning. Throughout trade as a whole the chain of employment is threatened with severance at many points, through all the processes of importation and distribution. From the Government's own point of view, as has already been indicated, there will be the effect on the national finances of a serious shrinkage of normal revenues, through Customs and other taxation channels. The Canterbury Chamber of Commerce, in a recent bulletin, sought to emphasise that, as production depends on trade, to increase production the processes of trade should be made as simple, as easy and as cheap as possible. It is manifestly impossible to argue that the Government's policies have had, or are having, the effect either of cheapening production or simplifying trading processes. The future holds only the promise of increasing confusion and complexity.