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faster than exports because of the rapid growth in construction and other
domestic consumption, and also because of sluggish demand for some of our
products in overseas markets. As the Financial Secretary recently said this
that is to say is not sustainable
situation is not sustainable
-
indefinitely though it is sustainable in the short term. It therefore
needs watching, though there is no cause for immediate anxiety. The
problem could be resolved in various ways; for instance by a revival in
demand for our exports, and also as I should expect by a drop next year in
the demand that private real estate developers are making on the construction
industry. And if neither of these factors develop sufficiently to correct
the situation there is still the inevitable mechanism of market forces
operating in this instance through the exchange rate, interest rates and the
money supply.
(ii) The need for diversification in the face of restrictions on textiles
26. The other point of concern is the threat to our textile industry's
ability to continue to grow in the face of restrictive attitudes in our
major markets. We believe such attitudes not only to be contrary to our
interests but wrongly based and dangerous to the expansion of world trade
and we will fight such attitudes as hard as Te can. levertheless, they add
new urgency to the long term desirability of broadening our industrial
bose. They require us to ask ourselves again whether we as a Government
are doing everything we can to facilitate the process or are unintentionally
doing anything that discourages it.
Iand production
27
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I think that Honourable Members would agree that the major
contribution the Government can make is through provision of adequate
supplies of land on which new industry can be built. The report of the
Special Committee on Land Production, which included two Unofficial
/members...
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