Ever since the standard rates of exchange went off and open market rates prevailed exporters were supposed to have reaped great benefits and profits due to the decline of the Chinese Dollar. As a matter of fact exporters here have not benefitted at all because with every decline of the dollar the dealers correspondingly created an offset increase in the cost of the commodity and this increase coupled with the material increases to be paid for freight and insurance, in foreign currencies at the depreciated Chinese Dollar rates, resulted in strangulating what small export business was possible. Since the hostilities Shanghai has been virtually cut off from supplies of Chinese produce from the interior and what little has filtered through has not resulted in any undue profit to exporters as buyers abroad consistently held off buying on account of the falling Chinese Dollar.
By the time some supplies reached the Shanghai market, at materially enhanced transportation charges, and the goods were marked up to meet the decline in exchange, the cif. Drices from here were found not competitive with other world markets for similar commodities. In the case of native manufactured goods the prices of raw materials, labour, coal, and manufacturing costs have so increased that. exports in these are neither practicable nor profitable to jthe shipper.
Exports from this market at present are necessarily limited to dealing in spot goods only as forward contracts would be too "hazardous because of the uncertainty of deliveries by suppliers and the inability of exporters to cover their export exchange forward beyond the current month.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.