The Exchange Rate.

Thames Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 19622, 1 February 1936, Page 3

The Exchange Rate.

REDUCTION NOT FAVOURED.

PROF. COPLAND’S VIEWS. All attempt to lower the rate of' exchange in New Zealand would be contrary to the experience of all other countries, and inconsistent with the fundamental policy necessary to promote internal recovery. That opinion, based on the experience of Australia, Great Britain, and other countries was expressed in an interview at Christchurch by Professor D. B. Copland, Dean of the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Melbourne, who has been economic adviser to the Governments of New Zealand and Australia. Professor Copland said that internal expansion and the increase in imports must, in the absence of improvement in export prices, impose some strain on the balance of payments. New Zealand was moving towards a position in which it would face this problem, and the greater the recovery in a country the more obvious the phenomenon became. It was this fundamental problem or reconciling recovery with a level of imporis that a country could afford that made currency stabilisation so difficult.