PUBLIC “TRIMMED”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26354, 8 January 1947, Page 4

PUBLIC “TRIMMED”

VEGETABLE CEILING PRICES FREE MARKET ADVOCATED (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Jan. 7. “ The public is being * trimmed ’ all the time—l laugh when I hear these broadcasts of ceiling prices,” said Mr F. Brown, Wellington, chairman of the New Zealand Fruit and Produce Merchants and Auctioneers’ Association, to-day. He said retailers asked the ceiling price irrespective of what they had paid in the market. He, personally, had been asked tenpence •for a cabbage which he knew had been sold to a Chinees retailer at one shilling a sack. Mr Brown associated himself with the recent statement by Mr J. Turner in Auckland when he said that a number of people with a knowledge of the trade considered that perishable lines such as fruit and vegetables should not be subject to ceiling prices and that the law of supply and demand should be allowed a free course. Mr Brown, however, said he differed from Mr Turner when he said that if control was inevitable it should be applied only to essential lines such as potatoes, onions, oranges, lemons, bananas and apples. Ceiling prices had resulted in unsatisfactory returns to growers and insufficient supplies of many lines on the market. Mr Brown added. The best way to encourage production in New Zealand was either to allow a free market or to guarantee returns that would ensure a payable return to producers.