Meat from Argentina
The basis for a new trade agreement with Argentina has now been reached, although the drafting of the final text has still to be completed. It is possible that even at this latest stage new hitches may occur, but as Sefior PerOn has yet to make one of those personal interventions with which negotiations of any sort in the Argentine usually terminate, it may confidently be assumed that we are to get our beef. We are, however, going to have to pay considerably more in order to keep up our exiguous meat ration ; the agreed price is reported to be ko6 a metric ton, which represents an increase of thirty per cent, over the price fixed in the Andes Agreement of February last year, and since food subsidies are not to rise above their present level, this increase will be passed on to the consumer. In the coming year we are assured of 300,000 tons of meat, and of an extra roo,000 tons if this is available for export, compared with the soo,000 tons negotiated under the Andes Pact ; in addition we are again to buy Argentine grains, fats, oils, hides and some other. commodities. On her side Argentina will buy oil and coal and a fairly large quantity of goods such as motor-cars, which are classed as non-essentials. The new agreement is an. example of more or less straight barter, without any of the financial clauses which formed the most controversial feature of the Andes Pact. Although we are to pay more for meat, we are to make our cereal purchases at world prices, and not at the inflated prices which we were obliged to pay for them fourteen months ago. On the whole the agreement is satisfactory to both sides, and it should be the preliminary to more stable trading relations in the future. It will, at any rate, be some years before increased meat production in Australia, Ireland or at home makes any appreciable difference to our dependence on the Argentine market.
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