Adverse Trade Balance
Whichever way the overseas trade figures for March are looked at, the news which they give is bad. The adverse balance—that is the excess of imports over exports and re-exports for he month— was Lsta million. This single fact completely overshadows the record exports, which at £120,958,075 were the highest in value since 192o. Record exports make no difference to Britain's balance of payments problems if they are accompanied by record imports, but that is what happened in March. The most generous interpreta- tion of the facts set out in the Economic Survey for 1948 would make the maximum permissible deficit £30 million a month at this time, as against the £51 million actual deficit in March. Again, now that it has been announced that Marshall Aid to this country will amount to L331 million in 1948 we still cannot safely run a trade deficit of much more than L20 million a month on the average over the year. Even if every possible allowance is made for the roughness of the forecasts in the Economic Survey, the peculiarities of the Board of Trade returns and the hope that things will not be so bad in April, there is still no getting round the fact that that deficit will have to be recovered, and recovered painfully, in the rest of the year. Nor does deeper analysis of the figures reveal any comfort. Machinery, vehicles and other products containing steel helped to produce the record March export, but according to the revised export targets announced last week these industries can hardly expect to get suffi- cient steel-supplies to keep this up. Textile exports did not make a very good showing in March, but again, according to the revised targets, they must reach a very high level by the end of the year.
Previous page
