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until 1972. · The difficulty here is that the powers that we possess for allowing
relief on duty are insufficient to enable us to apply it exactly to those goods,
and only those goods, which we wish to relieve.
6
There are two possibilities.
An order could be made under the new Bill A
to implement our UNCTAD offer. In that case relief could only be given to goods ·
}
I
originating in those countries which were on the Treasury's list of UNCTAD
beneficiaries. The order would then have to restrict the relief to Commonwealth
beneficiaries. This relief would therefore appear discriminatory and would be
very short-lived so that it would probably attract suspicion in the context of
the UNCTAD GSP. On the whole, we would not regard this course as desirable. [l.
The alternative would be to make an Order under Section 1(3) of the Import
Duties Act 1958. This would involve entering into agreements withi the
Commonwealth 'countries concerned in which we could require them to continue to ·
operate the 1971 quotas until the end of the year in return for relief from duty
on these goods. The major difficulty with this is that the relief could not be
confined to goods by reference to the date of shipment, but would have to apply
to all goods arriving within a specified period. 'We should therefore have to
calculate how much time to allow for shipment and provide for the relief to run
for that period, say to the end of February 1972. Since different countries will
have different times of shipment, it would probably be necessary, to have a number
of different orders specifying` different periods which would all have to be
negotiated with the respective countries. Even if we confined the concession
arbitrarily to major Commonwealth restricted suppliers we would be faced with ....
the prospect of onerous negotiations and a series of Parliamentary Orders. More
seriously, under this system there would be an open incentive to the beneficiaries
to attempt to beat the shipping times allowed and to send us (perhaps by air) goods which during the specified period could enter free of both duty and quota.' It is
difficult to quantify this risk. But we cannot assume the amounts would be
assume the amounts would be insignificant and if they were not we should be open
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