NE of the causes of the extremely disadvantageous decline in commodity prices was -the Sino-Japanese war, which he thought had a much greater effect on commodity prices and world trade than was fully realized by the people of Great Britain, declared Mr. Oliver Stanley, President of the Board of Trade, in reply to a question in the House of Commons yesterday.
China, for a period of two or three years, he said, provided an increasing market for British export goods, and many in Britain, impressed by the new life and organization in China and by the greater security and prospects and rising standard of life, were looking towards this immense market as a possible solution to the many export difficulties of Britain and other countries.
The effect of the war upon hopes of that kind, Mr. Stanley asserted, was both immediate and disastrous.
In reply to another question, he said that cotton imports to Japan for the Mrst quarter of 1938 compared lif] with Jost year fell from ¥.354,400,000 to ¥.73, 700,000.
While 1937 was a good year industrially, Mr, Stanley declared, in the first four months of 1938 there hed been a certain slackening in in-¥4 crease of production.
The adverse balance of trade, he continued, was £52,000,000 compared! with. £18,000,000 the previous year, and was affected to some extent by a special transaction in silver amounting to £11,000,00.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.