§ Mr. Rookerasked the Secretary of State for Industry if he will publish comparable figures of the rate of profit in manufacturing industry for the United Kingdom, West Germany, France and Japan for each of the following years: 1950, 1955, 1960, 1965, 1970, 1975, 1976 and 1977.
§ Mr. CryerFigures with which to make satisfactory comparisons are not available. Some data on profitability in a number of countries have been published by the OECD for the corporate sector as a whole—contained in OECD report "Towards full Employment and Price Stability", published in June 1977—but they must be interpreted with considerable caution. There are conceptual and statistical shortcomings inherent in any measure of profitability; divergent definitions of capital invested invalidate the inter-country comparisons of levels of profitability.