High Exchange.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20231, 15 February 1934, Page 8

High Exchange.

Not Justified in N.Z. Says Visitor.

'J'HERE IS NOT the actual degree of recovery in trade conditions noticeable in New Zealand that there is in Australia at the present time, according to Mr Robert A. Balfour, who has returned to the Dominion after an absence of seven years. He said yesterday that Australia had recovered considerable ground. Mr Balfour is a director of the Eagle and Globe Steel Company, Ltd., Sheffield, and has been away from England for a year, travelling in Egypt and Australia. The most encouraging feature of the recovery in England was the marked improvement in the iron, steel, coal and engineering industries, which had perhaps suffered more severely than others from the slump. England could not rely on her smaller industries for her prosperity as a whole. Mr Balfour said that his firm was one of the largest tool steel specialist firms in England and it, in common with others, had had a lean time. Matters were difficult still, but there was a decidedly upward trend. They had to contend with restrictions imposed by exchange, duties and political action generally, which interfered with the freedom of international trade.

“My own view,” he said, “is that the exchange rate operating in New Zealand is not justified economically whatever the political aspect may be.. It will defeat its object sooner or later.”