§ Mr. Austin MitchellTo ask the President of the Board of Trade further to his White paper "Competitiveness: Helping Business to Win", what evidence he has in respect of profit levels of(a) United Kingdom manufacturers and (b) major foreign based manufacturers; and what was the estimated return on capital in manufacturing industry for each year since 1970 in (i) the United Kingdom and (ii) other major Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.
§ Mr. SainsburyFor the United Kingdom, the gross trading surplus of manufacturing companies and public corporations plus income from self-employment from manufacturing can be obtained from table 2.2 of the Central Statistical Office Blue Book. The rate of return on capital employed by manufacturing companies is shown in CSO Bulletin 64/93 "Profitability of UK Companies (1962–1992)".
Table 14 of the OECD's "National Accounts 1993" contains information on the operating surplus and rates of return on capital employed in manufacturing for OECD countries. These figures are on a slightly different basis from those published by CSO, and are provided for a variety of years.
Copies of all the above-mentioned publications are available in the Library of the House.