§ 69. Mr. M. Lindsayasked the President of the Board of Trade which industries have been given an export target expressed in percentage of their total output and what the percentage is in each case.
§ Mr. BottomleyThe export targets which were published on 12th September, last year, were all expressed in terms of value and not as percentages of total output. They superseded the original export targets which had been fixed for a number of industries in percentage form. It would, however, be misleading to give a list of such percentages since they are not uniformly applied, as the contribution of individual firms to the overall value target for their industry must depend, to a large extent, on the circumstances of each particular case. These will vary according to such factors as, for example, the composition of a firm's order book where products with a long delivery date are in question, the importance of the home demand and the time required by some firms to build up an export trade in their products.