§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Trade whether he will circulate in the Official Report a table
378WMarch 1973. All duties in this range were reduced by 20 per cent. on 1 April 1973 in accordance with article 32 of the Act of Accession, and again on 1 January of each of the years 1974, 1975 and 1976. The last duties were removed on 1 July 1977.
showing the terms of trade and relative volume of imports and exports of machinery for each year from 1970, for each quarter from the beginning of 1976 and for October; and to what factors he 379W attributes the deterioration of the United Kingdom's trading position.
§ Mr. EyreThe information requested is given in the table below. Figures of relative volume have been affected in the first half of the year by the road haulage dispute and, more recently, particularly in October, by the disputes in the engineering industry.
The deterioration evident in the figures of relative volume owes much to the United Kingdom having a somewhat stronger underlying trend growth for imports than exists in other countries, probably resulting from weaknesses in non-price factors and industrial performance generally, aspects which have also affected our export performance.
UNITED KINGDOM TRADE IN MACHINERY* OTS basis 1975=100 Relative volume† Terms of trade‡ 1970 119 96 1971 124 98 1972 96 102 1973 84 94 1974 82 99 1975 100 100 1976 95 96 1977 87 103 1978 74 111 1976— 1st quarter 105 99 2nd quarter 97 96 3rd quarter 91 96 4th quarter 89 96 1977— 1st quarter 85 100 2nd quarter 88 102 3rd quarter 87 104 4th quarter 89 106 1978— 1st quarter 78 109 2nd quarter 75 109 3rd quarter 74 112 4th quarter 71 113 1979— 1st quarter 59 114 2nd quarter 67 117 3rd quarter 63 121 October 53 121 * SITC (Rev 2) divisions 1971 to 1977. † Export volume index (fob) as a percentage of the import volume index (cif); seasonally adjusted. ‡ Export unit value index (fob) as a percentage of the import unit value index (cif); not seasonally adjusted.