PRICE CONTROL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 78, Issue 7025, 28 February 1949, Page 5

PRICE CONTROL

BESENTED BY BUSINESS PEOPLE IRKSOME RESTRICTIONS “Resentment has been expressed in many quarters at the action of the Government in making profit control —for it is now profit control and not price 'control—a permanent part of the country’s economy,” says the annual report of the furniture trade group of the New Zealand Retailers’ Federation presented to the annual meeting at Timaru. “The bill introduced and passed last year gives the Price Tribunal sweeping powers and we are now convinced that the federation’s policy in the future should be to have profit control eliminated. Until recently the federation has agreed with some form of price control, feeling that this has been necessary when certain goods or commodities were in short supply and the demand great. The position is altering rapidly, and we are bold enough to suggest that pressure should be kept up for the gradual removal of price control on those articles or commodities which are now being produced in such quantities as will enable prices to be held down by the inexorable results of competition. That is to say, .when supplies are sufficient to meet ‘the demand. • Prices Will Fall “We are convinced that in many cases prices will fall if price control is lifted. The tribunal has power to remove any commodity from the operations of price control, and we should from now on fight unceasingly for the removal of irksome restrictions which were once tolerated, but which are now highly objectionable. “We suggest that the Government would be doing a service if it removed* immediately many commodities now subject to control. Prices would in many cases fall, while it would also result in the releasing of many civil servants who could then carry out work of a more productive, and no doubt more pleasant nature,” the report says.