FOREIGN ECONOMIC AND COMMERCIAL POLICY


greatly shortened by the excellence of the report with which the
Fund has provided us and by the fact that the Fund was not content
to present merely a mass of statistics, but gave us the benefit of an
orderly analysis of those statistics and the benefit of its judgment as
to their significance in many respects. I believe that this has materially
aided my Delegation and I am sure will materially aid the other Con-
tracting Parties in coming to their conclusions in these consultations.
   The delegate of the United Kingdom pointed out at the opening of
 Tuesday's meeting that this is a consultation between the United
 Kingdom and the Contracting Parties and that one of its principal
 purposes is to find out what is in each other's minds. Therefore, I
 would like to lay before the Working Party what is in the mind of my
 Delegation as a result of the facts which have been presented to us
 and the views which have been expressed in our last two days of meet-
 ings, as well as of the careful consideration which my Government
 have given to this problem in the weeks prior to this conference.
   First of all, let me say that we very much welcome the marked
 improvement which has occurred in the financial position of the
 United Kingdom, in its foreign exchange position generally and par-
 ticularly in its foreign exchange position vis-a-vis the dollar area,
 And mlay I say at this point that when I speak ;of the United Kingdom,
 I mean the United Kingdom as a GATT member which, of course,
 includes its dependent overseas territories.
   We are very glad to see the situation of the United Kingdom change
 from one of sharp deficit in current dollar accounts for over ten years,
 accentuated by a deterioration in its position in mid-1949, to one of"
 a consistently improving gold and dollar position, with an actual'
 surplus developed in the first half of 1950, which is apparently in-
 creasing. We are glad to see that the United Kingdom's gold and
 dollar reserves have doubled from September 1949 to September 1950,
 to reach the highest figure in over ten years.
   Let us run over some of the figures of the past few years to get a
specific indication of the trend in the United Kingdom's current
balance of payments.
  For the year 1941 there was a deficit of $2.3 billion. In 1948 this
deficit had dropped to $900 million. In the first quarter of 1949 it had
dropped to an annual rate of $460 million. In the second quarter of
1949 it suddenly jumped to $1.13 billion, and in the third quarter
remained high at an annual rate of $1 billion.
  The gold and dollar reserves of the United Kingdom, which reflect
transactions of the whole sterling area, also showed a sharp deteriora-
tion in mid-1949, dropping from $1.9 billion at the end of the first.
quarter to $1.3 billion on September 18,1949.


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