“TOO MANY SHIPS”

Taranaki Daily News, 14 November 1934, Page 16

“TOO MANY SHIPS”

THE MENACE OF SUBSIDIES. “GLARING EXAMPLES” GIVEN. Auckland, Nov. 12. The collapse in world trade as reflected in the shipping industry was reviewed by Sir Alan Anderson, chairman of managers of the Orient Line and a director of the Bank of England, who arrived at Auckland from Sydney by the Niagara on a short business visit. “Owing to the shrinkage of world trade the shipping industry of the World is in a very bad way,” Siy Alan said. “A supplementary reason is that many nations are engaged in a polity of subsidies and are encouraging people to build ships which would not otherwise be built and to keep in commission tonnage which would otherwise be scrapped. This policy has been carried to such length in certain trades that it has entirely upset the ordinary basis of commerce. “I do not think I need stress this point,” he said. “You have one of the most glaring examples of subsidised shipping in the San Francisco-New Zealand-Aus-tralia service. There is a similar instance in the ‘Blue Riband’ trade of the North Atlantic, where British lines are faced with entirely artificial competition from foreign companies backed by the treasuries of foreign Governments. INTERVENTION JUSTIFIED. “British shipowners have debated this problem, and while they dislike and deprecate any extension of the system of Government interference either by subsidies or by restrictions they feel that where legitimate British enterprises are being made impossible by deliberate and sustained foreign attacks conducted at the expense of foreign treasuries it is not only proper but necessary that the British Government concerned should intervene and sustain threatened enterprise until decent order has once more been restored to commerce. “The steps to be taken must of necessity vary with each particular case. In the North Atlantic the British Government has encouraged the Cunard and White Star Lines to join together, and has assisted to finance the building of the re-cently-launched Queen Mary. In your own trade between Australia and New Zealand and the United States I understand the Governments principally interested are at the moment in active debate. It is to be hoped that some solution to the present difficulty will be found. The question of tramp shipping is entirely separate from that of liners. At the time of my departure from London the shipowners of England had decided to call a world conference in the hope of arriving at some scheme for the rationalising of tramp tonnage through agreements for laying up or scrapping of redundant ships. “Just as it is impossible to fill a sieve with water, so it is hopeless to reduce the volume of redundant tonnage if a fresh supply of unnecessary ships is constantly being brought into being .by Government intervention and subsidies. A necessary corollary, perhaps even the foundation of any scheme for rationalising the wprld market for tramp tonnage, is either w secure an agreement of all the principal nations to abstain from creating unnecessary tonnage or to exclude from the markets of the world the commerce of those countries which fuse to restore health to world trade.